Integration is Key for Bonset America Corporation

Bonset America Corporation (www.bonset.com) a manufacturer of heat shrinkable film used in packaging for labels and safety seals was experiencing limited visibilty to their shop floor data. Bonset’s customers are film converters who specialize in printing this type of product and transforming it into printed sleeves to be dispensed on assembly lines. Productivity Challenges

Bonset saw improvements that they could make to gain instant visibilty to their shop floor data.

Bonset is a process manufacturing facility that uses a manufacturing execution system (MES) for the receiving of their raw materials. The integration of their MES with their ERP system caused unique challenges in the direct tracking of their finished goods back to their raw materials. Although they could see what was used on a particular day, if they changed lot numbers it was not always clear which lot number was used for a particular set of finished goods. In addition, they used their ERP system to perform approximately 50,000 transactions a day, making it nearly impossible to manually input their data.

Bonset had limited visibility to WIP, which caused an inability to determine the difference between efficiency at the extrusion stage versus the slitting (cutting) stage. Since it is normal for them to change slitting setups while still using material left over from a previous setup, they faced obstacles in tracing which material was used for a particular set of finished goods and how much by-product was produced. They would often research hand-written documentation to trace specific intermediate goods.

Although Bonset had a process in place to automatically weigh material put into the blenders, raw materials were still recorded manually. This manual input only allowed Bonset to record essential data elements and limited their ability to collect multiple data elements needed for traceability. In addition, Bonset collected a wealth of information from machines that would track conditions and physical characteristics of their intermediate product. This data was not linked to their ERP system; therefore anyone needing to research the data was forced to look up old paper documents. They also experienced challenges with their finished goods receiving process. The process also caused their operators to have to repetitively input the same data elements into their system.

The Radley Solution

Implementing an automated data collection solution that could integrate with their MES and ERP systems.

After implementing their ERP system, Bonset realized that in order to process the nearly 50,000 transactions performed daily they would need to automate data collection. Bonset turned to Radley Corporation’s Data Collection solution with their IntelliLabel Label License Plating advance feature.

Radley’s solution was integrated with their MES, ERP system and scale equipment. This integration helps Bonset to automatically record intermediate product characteristics and gives them a real-time view of their WIP.

Productivity Improvements

Bonset has seen improvements in their inventory and finished goods receiving processes.

Bonset can now calculate efficiency and better determine their costs. Radley’s Data Collection solution automatically deducts raw materials from inventory and assigns them to production jobs in real-time as they are weighed from the silos and bins. It also automatically records how much by-product was produced and turned back into recycled material. Bonset now has a streamlined finished goods receiving process that takes significantly less time to enter data, with no redundancy.

Rob Richardson, Bonset’s IT Manger notes, “The implementation of Radley’s data collection solution allowed us to do a lot of things that we had always wanted to do. We knew we were collecting the information necessary to eliminate manual entry of material issues, but we just didn’t have a means to automatically convert the data from the MES to the ERP”.

Richardson continues, “The streamlined interface for the production staff requires a minimum amount of information but accomplishes all of the transactions necessary to accurately determine both our extrusion yield and slitting yield. The biggest improvement for Bonset has been the ability to more accurately trace materials in our system and our raw material inventory accuracy.”