Slashing Data Entry Time & Improving Product Quality
Remove Overtime & Improve Product Quality
Case Study – Manufacturing
Find out how one company slashed Oracle EBS routing updates from six months to 24 hours, without staff working overtime, while improving product quality using More4apps.
The Client
Avery Dennison, a global materials science company specializing in labeling and functional materials, headquartered in Glendale, California, with over 30,000 employees in 50+ countries.
The Challenge
As Data Management Coordinator, Josh Evangelista was responsible for setting up and maintaining manufacturing routings, the master data that captures the process and resource demand for each item, dictating how items are used, in what order, and in what quantity.
Avery Dennison launched a project to restrict certain items and machines in the manufacturing process to improve product quality, reduce rework and stock write-offs, and limit returns. Piloted at a single plant, the project required over 24,000 routing updates.
“Trying to update 24,000 records just would not have happened manually in the time frame required. We would still be working on them six months later. Without the More4apps products, we’d probably need a few more people just to keep the data up-to-date, and running projects like this would require a lot of overtime,” said Evangelista.
Hiring additional staff would strain the budget, and adding overtime would cost employees their work-life balance. Meanwhile, failing to update records risked missed production deadlines. Avery Dennison needed a faster, more accurate way to manage its data.
The Solution
Using the More4apps Bill of Materials Wizard, Item Wizard, and Routing Wizard from the EBS Toolbox, Avery Dennison updated all 24,000 routing records, cutting the project from six months to 24 hours, with no new hires and no overtime required.
“Using the Routing Wizard was pretty straightforward. Doing the updates manually for 24,000 records would just be out of the question. The Wizard allowed me to update 1,000 routings per hour, while the process ran in the background on my PC, allowing me to multitask,” said Evangelista.
The Results
Beyond the time savings, More4apps improved data accuracy and helped prevent machine breakdowns tied to incorrect routing data, directly supporting better product quality on the production line.
“Data accuracy is probably the next biggest thing. Loading data through Excel is so much easier than people manually punching information via the keyboard and making mistakes. Data quality improvement flows onto the production lines. There certainly can be times where machines can go down if something isn’t correct,” said Evangelista.
Since this initial success, Avery Dennison has expanded its use of More4apps across more of its locations.
“From our perspective, it’s been huge, especially the routing and BOM wizards, because there’s no way of really doing that outside of these products,” said Evangelista.