Minimizing customer risk and maximizing reliability are the energizing sparks driving custom battery pack manufacturer Creasefield Ltd.Since 1982 the British based company has supplied custom battery packs to commercial aerospace, automotive, electronics, government, maritime and many other applications.
Mark Andrew, Creasefield’s Engineering Director, says the company has always followed the highest production standards to achieve its reputation for quality and integrity. However, he recently discovered that the company could quickly improve its operations by changing the way it documented manufacturing work instructions.
“We used to use standard engineering drawings to make the packs,” Mark says. “There was a lot of interpretation of how the packs were put together.”
Creasefield relied on the Word format to paste drawings into a document and then write instructions around them.
“It was very cumbersome and difficult to maintain the style and the format throughout the document,” Mark recalls. “It was also a challenge to reproduce our product with the same quality over and over again.”
Mark wanted a better way to document his work processes. After a quick Google search, Mark found a company that could give him the instructions he needed at a price he could afford.
“Price was a factor, but not the only one,” he says. “There were competing products in the U.K., but they were at the other end of the price scale.”
Mark downloaded a copy of FFD, Inc’s LockStep Software and soon reaped the benefits of the new work instructions. Today, every Creasefield battery pack is made with the LockStep software.
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Creasefield engineers and technicians are using FFD’s LockStep software’s intuitive graphical authoring interface, full revision control, pre-formatted PDF deployment and direct digital camera image capture. Additionally, text, picture and spreadsheet integrated editors are available to Mark.
“We were ignoring the problem and, to a certain extent, not doing the work instructions,” Mark says. “LockStep is straightforward to use. We’ve made great gains in our business because our work instructions are so much better than before.”
“We can also push new builds into eight different teams of people,” Mark continues. “Now, reproducibility is maintained anywhere in the factory. There is far less confusion, we need fewer operators and the office staff gets fewer questions clarifying how to make packs.”
For information: FFD, Inc. and LockStep Software visit us at — www.sequencesoftware.com
For Information: Creasefield Ltd.
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