Building a more efficient manufacturing process at Seyer Industries

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Challenge:

Replace an inefficient, paper-based workflow with a digital solution for managing production jobs at a leading aerospace manufacturing company.

Results:

  • Reduced direct labor costs by streamlining recordkeeping, manufacturing, and employee training
  • Cost savings through reduced manufacturing errors
  • Eliminated potential security and regulatory compliance issues

 

“We’ve built a collaborative relationship over the years with Skeleton Key. Unlike other software vendors who might tell us what can’t be done, Skeleton Key’s mindset is that we’re going to figure out how to solve problems and create solutions together.”  

 — Mark Seyer, President, Seyer Industries

 

In 2019, Seyer Industries was a 21st-century aerospace company with a 20th-century problem. They were a growing manufacturer of complex aircraft parts and equipment, delivering the highest standards of quality. But despite having adopted electronic tools elsewhere in the business, key elements of their manufacturing process still relied on paper records. This system had worked for them in the past, but now it was holding them back.

A family-owned company founded in 1957, Seyer Industries specializes in state-of-the-art, vertically-integrated aerospace manufacturing. The company uses cutting-edge technology to produce vital structural components for civilian and military aircraft, as well as the specialized and complex support equipment required to keep them flying.

“We have a lot of different customers. We build a lot of different things, from nuts and bolts to huge, complex assemblies,” said Mark Seyer, president of Seyer Industries. “And the requirements tend to be very different depending on the customer, depending on the size or scope of the job.”

Producing these intricate parts and systems at scale requires the Seyer Industries team to track a vast amount of information, from materials requirements and machine settings to inspection results and approvals. All of this information needs to be up-to-date, verifiable, and easily accessible at each stage of production to support their lean manufacturing operation.

Challenge: Improving a paper-bound manufacturing process

In 2019, every manufacturing job was accompanied by paperwork known as the traveler — so named because the documents traveled around the factory with the job through each step in production.

The traveler was meant to be the source of truth for job specifications, inspections, and other vital information. But this legacy process had become a bottleneck. A growing volume of orders meant more paperwork to manage. With government and military contracts came additional documentation, further increasing the level of complexity by adding still more paperwork and sign-offs. And some of these documents had to be retained for as long as 10 years afterward to ensure regulatory compliance.

“It was chaotic. You had thousands of pieces of paper out on the shop floor,” Mark Seyer said.

In addition, any changes during the production process meant the traveler had to be updated to ensure consistency. “Anytime there’s a change, anytime there’s a planning update, you would have to go find that traveler, destroy the old copies, print the updated version, and copy all the quality stamps and sign-offs on that physical paper copy before you can proceed with the job,” said Jarred Meyer, solutions architect at Seyer Industries.

On top of all this, the traveler was too easy to misplace. Realizing the amount of time spent looking for travelers around the factory spurred Seyer Industries’ leadership to look for a solution. “If you’ve got 65 people spending eight minutes a day looking for travelers, then you multiply that by all the working days in the year, now you’re looking at a lot of wasted time,” Mark Seyer said.

Solution: Custom software with Epicor integration

After experimenting with off-the-shelf software and an in-house concept for an electronic version of the traveler, neither of which proved to be viable, Seyer Industries turned to our team at Skeleton Key. After we learned about their operations and their long-term goals for growth, we developed a custom software solution to modernize their production process.

Today, the paper traveler and key characteristics documentation have been replaced with the E-Traveler – a custom application that tracks all the information required for each job, enabling real-time updates and a high level of operational security. This custom software, built on the Claris FileMaker platform, is highly reliable and integrates seamlessly with Seyer Industries’ Epicor ERP instance.

At stations throughout the plant, factory workers use iPads to access and record information on each job as it arrives, making it easier to document complex processes and find important data quickly.

What’s more, the application is flexible and customizable so that as Seyer Industries’ needs change, their software can easily evolve to match.

“There was so much that we were able to bring into the E-Traveler,” Jarred said. As they reviewed workflows and found processes that were being documented on paper or by word of mouth, the Seyer team worked with our developers to add new functionality to the E-Traveler. “Once we had the foundation of the E-Traveler in place, we could add checklists and buyoffs — things that they once either had to go to a central location to do, or that they would have written down on a pad,” Jarred said.

Before long, the E-Traveler made it possible to record, consolidate, and preserve information that was otherwise difficult to find or easy to lose when staff members moved to other roles. “It was kind of like a snowball effect,” Jarred said. “As soon as people got it in their hands and started using it, they said, ‘Hey, why don’t we do this in there, too?’”

Results: Reduced staff costs and more efficient production processes

According to their estimates, eliminating the time spent updating, maintaining, and finding paper travelers has saved Seyer Industries thousands of dollars per month across the six years they’ve been using the E-Traveler. Those hours are now devoted to more valuable tasks that support the company’s continued growth and innovation.

In addition, replacing paper forms with the E-Traveler has streamlined employee training and onboarding significantly — a further savings of hundreds of hours each year.

With the E-Traveler supporting their lean manufacturing processes, Seyer Industries has successfully pursued and won new business. They point to the benefits of the E-Traveler, including the ability to quickly manage and exchange data, as a competitive advantage in discussions with current and potential customers.

And in an environment where a tiny mistake can turn a part worth multiple thousands of dollars into scrap metal, reducing the opportunity for errors has driven additional savings.

“There are tons of other benefits from moving from paper to electronic,” Jarred Meyer said. “From being able to access historical data in the E-Traveler to see how something was running in the past, to seeing how many pieces were finished last night, there’s so much we can do.”

“Since its initial implementation, our E-Traveler has continually evolved, driven by a culture of continuous improvement,” Mark Seyer said. “With a focus on standardizing internal processes, the E-Traveler has become a cornerstone of these enhancements and will remain central to our efforts moving forward.”

“The E-Traveler’s ability to seamlessly integrate with our other software platforms while still offering the flexibility of simple customizations empowers our team to access meaningful, business-wide data,” Mark Seyer said. “Having this information instantly accessible equips our teams to make faster, more informed decisions — an advantage we will continue to leverage as the company prepares for the next leg of growth.”

Custom software can solve your manufacturing challenges

Ask yourself these questions about your current manufacturing operations:

  • What processes do you still manage using paper or spreadsheets?
  • What is the real cost of working with paper or error-prone spreadsheets, along with the cost of rework and/or non-compliance issues when those processes fail?
  • If a custom software tool could make these processes more efficient and less prone to errors, how would that change your operations?

Book a consultation with us today and find out how we can help your manufacturing business operate more efficiently and securely with custom software.