• Sort
• Straighten
• Shine
• Standardize
• Sustain
• Safety

"We are excited to support John Deere and its dealership community by offering the technology needed to realize their vision of a more effective service organization," states Jim Jackson, CEO, Dispatching Solutions, inc.

Software developed by Dispatching Solutions combines centralized business information, configurable workflow processes, and live-updating location data. These features help dispatchers and dealers organize services, including technicians in the field. DSi's flagship application,DSi Service Manager®, links together all essential components of field service operations including order management, GPS asset monitoring, preventative maintenance scheduling, labor tracking, and invoicing. Features such as skill matching, drag-and-drop scheduling, intelligent mapping and routing, and flexible search filtering are incorporated to reduce errors and save time.

Using ARES®, a business rule management system, in conjunction with DSi Service Manager® allows dealerships to customize the delivery of real-time information to customers, technicians, and sales personnel.  Work time, appointment lead times, and work-to-bill cycle times can be greatly reduced, improving dealership margins, freeing up busy personnel , and creating real, measureable savings.

Dealerships can use the integrated reporting system or systems such as Cognos® or Crystal Reports® to create Summary, Exception, or Detail reports on a recurring basis to track performance and business standards.

"This partnership will make a great impact on how technology is utilized within John Deere dealerships. We are raising the bar on service standards with our optimized, paperless products for transport and service management." –Brian Baluyot, VP Business Development, Dispatching Solutions, inc.

About Dispatching Solutions, Inc:  Based in Upland, California, Dispatching Solutions is a supplier of service and transport management software solutions for equipment service, transportation, and rental companies.  For nearly 20 years Dispatching Solutions has provided services and solutions for managing and improving logistics to heavy equipment manufacturers, dealers and transporters. Through forward thinking and innovation, we have expanded our expertise to all aspects of equipment service and transportation. DSi products and support have helped our customers save millions of dollars each year in their transportation and field service operations through improved processes and greater efficiency.

The Regensburg facility belonging to international automotive supplier Continental ranks among the best plants across Europe when it comes to implementing lean production. At the presentation of the Automotive Lean Production Awards, offered for the sixth time by trade journal Automobil Produktion and management consultants Agamus Consult, Continental finished first in the "International Corporations" category. "This award has been earned by our employees, who in the last few years have consistently followed the path to lean production that we prescribed. Through extensive training measures we've laid the cornerstone for the continuous improvement of our production processes and an increase in quality, ultimately enabling us to boost the competitiveness of the plant," said Regensburg Plant Manager Wolfgang Güntner at the awards ceremony in Munich.

Kaizen and jidoka: a challenge for the workforce

One of the most prestigious honors in the industry, the Lean Award is based on the results of a benchmark study in which Agamus Consult puts the implementation of lean strategies in the European automobile industry under the microscope. The Award is open to both automakers and suppliers. This year the jury registered "an even higher level of quality-orientation, a rigorous focus on value-added processes, and involvement of employees in the implementation phase." This was also the route adopted by Continental in Regensburg. "Concurrent with short-time working in 2008/2009 we set up an extensive training program and launched a professional development offensive," said Plant Manager Güntner. Over the past two years, more than 2,000 employees attended the various courses offered by the Lean Academy set up specifically for this purpose. Training covered the most common concepts as well as the methods and management philosophies without which lean production cannot work. Kaizen - the incremental ongoing improvement of a product or process - has since become part of the everyday vocabulary of Continental employees , as has jidoka, another idea developed by Japanese automaker Toyota, whereby product quality is not simply inspected at the end of the line but monitored throughout each individual production process. To make that possible, every single employee must be trained in the system, enabling them to spot a defect immediately and then take the initiative to stop production. While that means a short-term disruption and loss of production, the bottom line is a marked increase in quality, because faults are immediately identified and rectified. "This way we attain not one but two key goals of lean production," said Dr. Markus Fischer, Head of Industrial Engineering at Continental in Regensburg: "We obtain an improvement in quality and avoid any waste of resources."

Lean production leads to tangible improvements

The improvements achieved at Continental in Regensburg through the rigorous implementation of the lean production philosophy and the resultant optimization of the production process can be measured. "We were able to show that the introduction of lean production has had a positive impact on both our quality performance and our financial indicators," emphasized Dr. Fischer. By way of example, during the past two years set-up times for the manufacturing cells have dropped to almost half their previous level. And the cells are designed in such as way as to make them scalable, so they can be readily adapted to changes in demand level. "We gear our efforts to customer demand, which, when it comes to the start of production of a new part or system, means we don't immediately go into highly automated mode," said Fischer.

According to the jury of the Automotive Lean Production Awards, along with the other winners, Continental has made "marked improvements in performance in respect of quality, productivity and costs." The key indicators in 2011 for productivity, costs, quality, throughput times and inventories also showed that the top-ranked players in the study were able to realize much more extensive improvements than other companies.

One important factor in the successful implementation of lean activities, according to Agamus Consult CEO Dr. Werner Geiger, was the creative input of the winning companies: "Successful companies don't simply embrace ready-made solutions; they adapt principles and best practices to their needs."

Evocos, a Silverbear solution, is a leading supplier of event software providing a world class event solution to all industries. We pride ourselves on listening, understanding and acting upon our customers’ event requirements. Our highly sophisticated and intuitive event solution helps you meet your daily challenges of managing an event from inception to conception increasing productivity, efficiency and recognising the business opportunities.

Evocos Event Managed Service

Evocos has extended it’s event offering to provide a managed event service, For a flat and affordable fee we will build a website branded to your corporate specifications and send out personalised, branded e- invitations to an uploaded targeted delegate audience. The invitation will allow your delegates, with just one click, to register for the conference/event online. Automated emails are then sent to the delegate confirming registration and further automated emails can be scheduled to send information such as; itinerary/agenda and information on the event or conference.

Evocos Conference & Event Scheduling Tool

Evocos Conference and Event Scheduler allows you to organise a multi-day conference or event bringing suppliers, sponsors and delegates together. Our scheduling tool recognises the constraints and complexities of scheduling multiple one to one meetings and workshops.

The Scheduler can be purchased and used as a standalone ‘out of the box’ solution which enables you to upload and make sense of your multiple spreadsheets. Alternatively, it can be integrated into our event software solution, evocos, for a complete end to end event management solution.

The evocos Event Scheduler is an industry specific, intuitive web-based tool which enables you to manage and schedule multifaceted one-to-one meetings and workshops for your delegates, suppliers, speakers and sponsors simply and efficiently

Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “I welcome Coca-Cola’s new £50 million investment programme in green technology and their ambitions to grow UK production.”

“Food and drink is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK, contributing some £20bn to the economy every year which is 15 per cent of our total manufacturing output,” Mr Cable added. “This investment is a major signal of confidence in the British economy.”

The production line at Coca Cola Enterprises, Wakefield

The new facility will increase Wakefield’s storage capacity by 102%, which means that products manufactured at the site will be delivered to customers directly, rather than via external warehouses. As a result, the company has announced that it plans to save 500,000 road miles per year.

CCE is also investing £5.4m in a number of projects at its East Kilbride site. It is introducing a SIDEL SB0 20, a new energy-efficient bottle blowing facility that will produce lightweight PET bottles, reducing the amount of PET required. The drinks manufacturer has also invested in a ACMI Fenix 165 packaging machine that removes the need to use cardboard in the packaging of multi-pack products. 

An investment of £15m is boosting production capabilities at CCE’s Sidcup site. A new canning line will raise the site’s capacity by an additional 20 million cases of product per year. Innovations in the technology used on the new canning line mean that it will use 20% less water, helping to meet the company’s aim of reducing the site’s carbon footprint by 610 tonnes in 2012.

Simon Baldry, managing director of CCE GB, said: “We are committed to manufacturing in this country and are proud that 95% of what we sell is made in Great Britain. The £50m investment is crucial to developing our business in line with our fundamental objective to grow more, while minimising our impact on the environment.”

This news comes as the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is running a two-week long showcase of the importance of food and drink manufacturing to the UK economy. The event is running between 14 – 25^th November, at 1 Victoria Street, London, SW1H 0ET.

If the issues are deep enough to stymie economists who live and breathe this stuff, imagine the challenges for small and medium-sized companies who are trying to wade into emerging export markets.

At a trade summit organized by the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters this week, CME vice-president Ron Koslowsky talked about the challenges for small and medium-sized companies entering growing and complex markets.

He said it's not enough that they practise lean manufacturing, or invest in technology or have the right human resource strategy along with a trade capacity. They need to have the full packag, and that will look different for every firm.

Cubex Ltd. is a case in point. The Winnipeg company owned by Kitch and Bill Wilson has been making sophisticated underground drilling equipment for the mining industry since the early '80s.

Chris Ross, chief financial officer, said everything was right in its world when Canadian customers like Vale, Rio Tinto and Agnico-Eagle said they wanted a Cubex drill.

"But in some of the markets (around the world) these guys are dealing in, it became an issue about how do we support those drills," Ross said.

That issue was resolved last year when Cubex signed a service and distribution deal with Sandvik, the Swedish equipment manufacturer.

With about 130 employees at its Winnipeg head office and another 50 or so across the country, Cubex is a fraction of the size of Sandvik with its 47,000 employees and $12.6 billion in sales.

The two companies had been competitors until the deal was struck. But by a stroke of good fortune it so happens the kind of drill Cubex makes falls between the gaps of Sandvik's broad product offering.

The alliance gives Sandvik a more complete portfolio and it gives Cubex access to global markets it did not have, through Sandvik's vast network.

The small Winnipeg firm is now doing business in about 29 countries, including Saudi Arabia where it recently closed a deal on three rigs worth a total of about $5 million to a large copper mine in development owned by Barrick Gold.

Hemant Shah, Cubex's western Asia sales director, said, "Before the Sandvik deal the aftermarket was a problem for us. Now it's working out very well."

Ross said the Sandvik tie-in gives allows Cubex to reach the global market,

"We can now sell into those markets and the customer has comfort in knowing the support for the drill and investment is right there with them," he said.

It might not make immediate sense that the secret to success would be teaming up with a large competitor.

But Colin Robertson, a former senior Canadian trade diplomat, said it's not such an unusual approach. "There are professional courtesies among competitors," he said at this week's trade summit.

Robertson said it's important companies know what their "ask" is, know their product and also know the market they're selling into.

Cubex may have an advantage in that its specialized equipment firmly differentiates itself.

"There are plenty of examples in Winnipeg of companies like Cubex, Winpak and Buhler punching their way into the global market," Ross said.

Even companies like Winpak, the Winnipeg plastic film manufacturer with more than a half-billion dollars in sales, needed plenty of time to break into international markets.

Ian Garcia started to develop the Latin America market for Winpak 15 years ago. By 2005 annual sales had grown modestly to $5 million. But in the last five years there has been real success, bumping up sales to more than $30 million.

"It doesn't happen overnight," Garcia said. "You need time to learn the market. You have to be committed to being there for the long term."

Route Monkey has, over the past six years, developed the scheduling system for electric vehicles, which is initially being targeted at commercial vehicles and fleets.

The system helps fleet managers identify the best vehicle for every delivery or collection, helping to remove range anxiety and improve their return on investment.

And as well as securing the investment from the fund, Route Monkey has struck a strategic partnership with Smith Electric Vehicles, to supply its technology to the commercial electric vehicle manufacturer.

The global agreement will see RouteMonkey’s scheduling software interface with Smith Electric’s proprietary telematics system, Smith Link.

Route Monkey - which provides software solutions for vehicle operators, such as routing and back office solutions - is using the investment from the fund to concentrate its focus on the electric vehicle market, and to open a new office in Newcastle in addition to its base in Scotland. It is also looking at expanding its software product portfolio, again with particular focus on the electric vehicle market.

As the business grows, it plans to recruit more software developers and add further sales resource to its team, creating new jobs in the region.

Longer-term, the business is looking to break into the United States and to establish a re-seller network in territories including South Africa and Ireland.

Colin Ferguson, chief executive of Route Monkey, said his aspiration is for the business to be the “de facto scheduling provider in commercial electric vehicles” and that the partnership with Smith Electric Vehicles, based in Washington, Tyne and Wear, is a second major boost for the business, following the investment.

“We came up with the concept in 2006/07, and took it to market in 2009. Since that time, we have been relatively successful, becoming a niche software provider which turns over a seven-figure sum, all of which has been done under our own steam, with no investment,” he said.

“I am confident that with this support from IP Group, which we are extremely grateful for, we can take Route Monkey to another level. We are looking to export and expand into new areas internationally, and are able to look at doing that with a much more aggressive strategy than before.

“We are proud to be putting down roots here in the North East, and as our product portfolio and company grows, the new jobs we create will be here in this region.”

Angela Strand, chief marketing officer and senior vice-president of business development at Smith, said: “Route Monkey will help our fleet customers maximise the range capabilities of their all-electric trucks and LCVs.

“Fundamentally this is about electric vehicle asset management; EVs have a defined daily range capability. RouteMonkey helps fleets maximise the asset by utilising as much of that mileage as possible. The more miles the EV drives each day, the better the return on investment.”

Ian Wilson, investment manager at IP Group in Newcastle, said: “Route Monkey is an outstanding business, which has positioned itself well to take advantage of the many opportunities in the electric vehicles sector, which will undoubtedly be a real growth area in months and years to come. Its partnership with Smith Electric Vehicles is testament to the strength of its product.

“The North East already has a global reputation for its work in electric vehicles, and I am confident that Route Monkey will become an established name in the industry before too long.”

The Nugget Co. manufactures and markets a line of high-quality lambskin products used in the production of footwear, shearling garments, western and English-style saddles and seat covers for automobiles and airplanes. The San Antonio company also produces lambskin shearling for medical uses, such as wheelchairs and bed liners, and supplies shearling for the production of paint rollers and applicator pads. The company also provides custom tanning services for deer and exotic game hunters throughout Texas and the United States.

The company is working with the UTSA Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems. Over the next two years, the center will work with The Nugget Co. to improve its wastewater treatment processes and to reduce the amount of water the manufacturer uses to produce its sheep and lambskin products. The center is made up of a consortium of interdisciplinary faculty members that partner with various manufacturers.

“The depth of knowledge and collective resources available at UTSA supplementing lean technologies are exceptional, providing us a comprehensive package of assistance,” says J. Michael Wheeler, president of The Nugget Co.

The UTSA Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems was established in 2007.