Milltamo is a family-owned company located in Ylöjärvi, Finland. This small yet feisty machine shop has been operating since 1987, and it manufactures parts for the needs of e.g. the mining and sawmill industries. In addition to the CEO Kaisa Juortamo, the company employs 12 machinists and a foreman.
Milltamo had been struggling with an outdated system that allowed them only to print out work unit information and the dispatch notes, nothing else. Work queues were maintained in Excel and the amount of manual work was affecting the efficiency of the operations. The need for something more modern, yet simple enough, became evident, and the company started the search for a better solution.
After reviewing offers from different providers Milltamo chose to go with the new, cloud-based solution of MMS WCO:
“Some of the competing solutions included much more than we needed and the providers stated, that you need to use their system for a year before you start to get the full advantage out of it – this was definitely something we weren’t too impressed about”, CEO Kaisa Juortamo recalls. Luckily, this has not been the case with Fastems’ WCO Cloud Edition – quite the contrary: no heavy investments needed to get things rolling; a trial period for testing out the solution before making the final decision to go with the monthly subscription; the easiness of use, and the features that have been bringing in benefits from the day one, have proven the solution to be a great choice for a company such as Milltamo.
“It was really easy to learn to use the system. The onboarding process was handled really well by Fastems, and even though there are still differences in how well the system is utilized between different roles on the shopfloor, we have felt that it has been a good solution for our needs”, states Kaisa.
Even though all the features of MMS WCO Cloud Edition are not in use yet, the ones that are, have already brought in notable benefits:
- Order to production in no time: with WCO Cloud Edition, it now takes only a couple of minutes to create the part master data and add the production orders to the system. In addition to this, the part master data doesn’t have to be created all at once, but the solution allows you to add it on-the-go.
- Less Excels: thanks to the WCO Cloud Edition, there is no need to handle the work queues in Excels anymore, and the usage of the tool has diminished to the bare minimum altogether.
- All documentation in one place: for example, the unit drawings and notes on the orders are stored behind the created work units. The system also allows you to take pictures and attach them accordingly.
- Better visibility over what is happening in the production: though there is still some work to do to unify the way the system is operated, WCO Cloud Edition already enables a better visibility over the whole production setup, hence, the employees have better knowledge on what they should be doing next. In addition to this, Kaisa mentions that they are planning to add a screen to their shopfloor displaying the real-time dashboards from MMS, providing the employees a better and more transparent overview of the production.
- Enhanced and more reliable information sharing: for example, WCO Cloud Edition provides a better way to view what the actual work queue situation on each machine is. Also, if a customer is asking for the delivery times, it is much easier to give them the answer based on the data provided by the solution.
When asking whether there is something Kaisa would add, remove or develop in the WCO Cloud Edition, only one thing comes up:
“If you could add an option to export and print the dispatch notes as well, that would be great”, Kaisa laughs, “that would help us to finally get rid of the old system altogether.”
Even though the current uncertainties in the world are holding the plans made for Milltamo back a bit, the future looks bright for the company. The next step in the collaboration between Milltamo and Fastems is to dive deeper into the MMS WCO together, to find possible bottlenecks in the production or in the way the solution is being utilized. Based on the actual data collected from the shopfloor, our professionals will help Milltamo’s employees to find the possibilities for bringing even more efficiency to their production.
“Oh, one thing I really have to say: even though we are small, we have always felt that we are really a valued customer and partner for Fastems. Too often this is not the case when discussing with bigger solution providers – we are really happy about the way you have treated us and that has definitely been one of the main reasons why we chose you”, Kaisa adds as an endnote.
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Interested in the WCO Cloud Edition Solution? Get a free trial now – pay only the setup fee!
The trial package includes:
- MES Solution hosted at Azure Cloud (see technical specifications here)
- No machine interface required
- Free trial period
- Subscription licensing based on the number of machines or manual operations (work units) after trial period
- No customization or customer specific feature development, offered as a standard service
Read more about the solution here.