The Rae-Line team.

Established in 1972 and based in Melbourne, Australia, Rae-Line is a market leader in the design and manufacture of commercial upholstery, sports and safety padding solutions. From humble beginnings, the company has grown steadily and now employs more than 140 staff and supplies its products to some of the biggest names in the automotive, heavy transport, recreational vehicle and sports padding industries.

The Business Challenge

Rae-Line’s inhouse ERP solution was no longer keeping pace with its growth. The system didn’t include Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and the financial system was separate. Management identified a need for a fully integrated, robust system to meet its changing requirements and support future expansion.

The Solution

Rae-Line evaluated six ERP suppliers before selecting SYSPRO based on an in-depth presentation, the capabilities of the solution and the responsiveness of the team.

“From bulk upload of sales orders to managing those jobs through bills of material, inventory controls, stocktakes, Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and all the way through to the financial processes, SYSPRO is strongly aligned with our business processes.” – Dave Moody, General Manager and SYSPRO Project Leader

The Outcome

As a single point of entry, SYSPRO supports the 60% growth in staff and orders experienced by Rae-Line over the past two years. In addition, Rae-Line has seen a 20% improvement in quality and time through its ability to feedback information, resulting in fewer mistakes and reworks.

Meeting stringent customer demands

In recent months, several major customers have increased their demand by around 50%. This, combined with the 60% growth in staff and orders over the past two years, brought with it challenges which required a strong system.

Commenting on the increase in orders, Moody says: “Because SYSPRO has a strong front end and can upload bulk sales orders, we’ve been able to satisfy the increased demand with the same admin team.”

“The great thing about SYSPRO is once the demand is poured in the top end with sales orders and they turn in into jobs, it’s very clear what the demand for materials is. The MRP system is rigorous with all sorts of options to tailor it for our needs and hold a level of stock that makes sense for our business.”

(Right) Rae-Line Product Development Seat Cover Design.

Because SYSPRO is fully integrated, production staff know exactly what a customer needs on any particular day, increasing Rae-Line’s efficiency in production planning. This ensures Rae-Line can satisfy customers on time, every time.

“The MRP system ensures that we’ve got the right materials in the right place, so it’s at the workstation ready for a production staff member to complete the job, get the sales order dispatched and invoiced to the customer,” Moody says.

The increase in customer demand goes hand-in-hand with expectations for very high quality products and service. For example, Kenworth’s quality standard is 10 rejects for every million parts, calling for an unwavering focus on quality, while Kenworth Trucks demands on-time delivery three times a day as well as the flexibility to make changes on the fly.

Before SYSPRO, Rae-Line used what it called ‘paper Bibles’ which contained a photo, a work instruction and often a drawing for each order. Now, it uses tablets to make real-time changes, giving users access to the latest information.

“You simply can’t do that with a paper-based system. It needs to be electronic, correct and immediate,” Vorhauer says. “So if you look at that and sort of try and quantify it, maybe there’s a 20% saving there in quality and the time that it takes to do those parts, the correctness of those parts and we get docked money if we mess up. And SYSPRO has been a really good tool in the area of quality to help us.”

Harnessing strong alignment

From the day the decision was made to implement SYSPRO, the Rae-Line management team was confident that the solution offered the best alignment with its business.

“SYSPRO is solid and robust, which is what we need. We’ve reaped so many benefits but one of the greatest is the ability for people on the floor to get the latest, greatest information – that’s invaluable,” Vorhauer says.

SYSPRO Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) has also made a tangible difference to the business. With 100 staff engaging in more than 500 jobs a day, SYSPRO MOM enables Rae-Line to measure critical factors such as productivity, quality and the actual time staff are clocked into jobs.

“Using SYSPRO MOM has been an absolute revelation for us, a real time and money saver. It’s a whole new world for us,” Vorhauer says.

 “We’re a year and a bit into our SYSPRO journey and we can see so many benefits already. And there’s so many more on the horizon that we will realize over the next few years as we learn to understand the system and fit our business to the system. I don’t know where it ends, but it will be in a great place.”