SyteLine Workflow Automation helps Canterbury Windows deliver top-quality products, on time every time. Canterbury Windows, of Melbourne, Australia, began doing business in 1943 as a timber yard with drying kilns and a joinery shop.Today the company produces high quality wood-frame windows and doors for residential use. Throughout its history, Canterbury has faced two conflicting requirements: the need to produce highly complex custom products that are often one-of-a-kind, and an absolutely inflexible requirement to meet promised delivery dates.Through its innovative use of the business process automation capabilities within SyteLine® extended ERP software from Infor, Canterbury is equipped to meet these requirements as never before.

For Canterbury, outstanding product quality is just the beginning. Its products include advanced features such as transparent heatreflective glass coatings and double glazing for better thermal and sound insulation; and of course, every component of each window and door must meet precise installation measurements, down to the millimeter. In addition to meeting exact customer requirements, Canterbury’s products also must be delivered to the installation site precisely when requested.

“A particular home builder may do 2,000 homes a year, and they have a team of contractors going from site to site,” explains Canterbury General Manager John Edwards. “If they’re scheduled to install and the windows aren’t at the construction site, it destroys the entire schedule. It is critical for our stock to be delivered on time, every time.” Since Canterbury supplies window and door products to every state in Australia, meeting the challenge of on-time delivery is no small feat.

From a “patchwork” to a unified system
Prior to installing SyteLine, Canterbury Windows had collected a “patchwork” of new and old operations management systems, with very little integration between them. Many operations were handled on an ad hoc, or exception, basis, and everyday processes were extremely time and labor intensive.The company had a standalone order entry system, and had created its own inventory control, purchase order and project tracking systems in-house - none of which were integrated. Canterbury had no MRP capability and only a rudimentary reporting system.

This placed a heavy burden on Canterbury’s Manager of Information Technology, Glen Morgan, especially considering the fast pace at which Canterbury operates. The manufacturing plant typically handles 80 to 100 orders per day, purchasing 200 to 300 items necessary for production. Order turnarounds of seven days – from order placement to delivery of finished product – are not uncommon, although more complex products take longer to produce.

“In those days, I couldn’t take a vacation day, and often missed lunch,” Morgan recalls. “There simply weren’t enough hours in the day for the way we did things.”

Management at Canterbury knew that things could be better, and that the company’s continued growth and expansion into new territories would depend upon streamlining and automating business processes. They sought an integrated ERP suite that could interface smoothly with their industry-specific CAD system, provide order visibility throughout the process, and integrate the planning, accounting, inventory and reporting functions with production.Their solution was SyteLine ERP from Infor, and Canterbury found particular benefit in innovative use of the SyteLine Workflow Automation component.

Business process automation with SyteLine
The heart of SyteLine Workflow Automation is the active, process-driven flow of information throughout a manufacturing enterprise. Intelligent messaging ensures that notifications and requests for action are automatically triggered upon the completion of designated processes, and if a response is not forthcoming, alternate individuals are contacted.This way, no message remains unanswered and no process is delayed by lack of proper notifications. In SyteLine, automated processes are designed using a graphical user interface. Manufacturing professionals apply their business knowledge to visualize, design and implement workflows that can be used by anyone – within a department or across the enterprise.These automated workflows can even extend beyond the company walls, to include customers and suppliers.Workflows can be accessed via Microsoft Outlook e-mail folders and inboxes; so needed information is available in real time, in a familiar format, even to non-SyteLine users. Over time, these workflows can be monitored and fine-tuned to further improve business process efficiency.

In Canterbury’s case, SyteLine Workflow Automation became the lynchpin in the communication between the Soft Tech V6 CAD system and SyteLine ERP. Canterbury needed the industry-specific functionality offered by the V6 system, but wanted it to integrate smoothly with SyteLine. Infor worked with Canterbury to design automated business processes that bridged the gap.

“Initially, we hoped to be able to process 100 orders in 24 hours,” Morgan recalls. “Our general manager challenged us to try and do 100 orders in just eight hours.With SyteLine Workflow Automation, we now process 100 orders in six hours. It’s exceeded our expectations and made a significant difference in our operational throughput.”The company runs 2,000 to 5,000 workflows per day, made up of more than 40,000 individual steps.

SyteLine Workflow Automation was also the key to dramatically speeding up the purchase order process. “Our products are very complex, with many individual pieces that must be ordered in exactly the correct dimensions or they’re useless,” Edwards explains. “One millimeter variation in either direction is unacceptable.We order materials daily, in huge quantities, and need them delivered in 24 to 48 hours. Accuracy of orders is critical.”

Before implementing SyteLine Workflow Automation, creating necessary purchase orders was a labor-intensive eight- to 12-hour process. Canterbury now has the process down to a matter of 30 minutes, with greater accuracy. Each piece of glass ordered can now be referenced back to its job.The price for each piece must be calculated, and then grouped by supplier for each order. With SyteLine Workflow Automation, this is automated, and when the purchase order is completed, purchasing is notified by e-mail – a world of difference from the tedious manual process.

"Anyone in any of our offices can tell a customer exactly where their order is in the production process, and when it will be on the delivery truck." John Edwards General Manager Canterbury Windows

Additional business value
Canterbury also improved its business processes through the use of SyteLine Data Collection to automate shop floor data capture and track orders in real time through the production process. Bar-coded labels correspond to diagrams captured in the CAD engine, linked in turn to specific customer orders. “This gives us a huge opportunity to be responsive to our customers,” Edwards says. “Anyone in any of our offices can tell a customer exactly where their order is in the production process, and when it will be on the delivery truck.This ability to see right across the business is helping to maintain Canterbury as an industry leader in the Australian window market, and is seen as a great competitive advantage.”

SyteLine’s ability to support business intelligence and product costing also provides valuable advantage to Canterbury Windows. “Now we can look at our customers and orders line-by-line and see profitability by customer, by order, by sales rep, or by territory,” Edwards explains. “We had nothing like this before, and we feel that we’ve just scratched the surface in terms of what the system can do.The opportunities facing us now are enormous.”