A Manufacturing company was running its entire operation on old practices, and institutional memory. DraconX designed and delivered a comprehensive digital transformation cloud-migrating their operations, automating their supply chain, and building the data infrastructure needed to manage a scaling business with confidence in under a year
The Opportunity
Hamburg Mantles is a family owned precision engineering manufacturer supplying components to automotive, and industrial equipment OEMs across Nowray. Founded 20 years ago, the business had grown steadily on the strength of manufacturing quality and client relationships, but its internal operations had not scaled with it.
Every critical business process was managed through a combination of Excel files, third-party communication channels, and phone calls. Production scheduling was managed on a shared spreadsheet that multiple people edited simultaneously, leading to version conflicts and planning errors. Inventory was tracked manually, with no real-time visibility into raw material levels until a production line was already at risk of stopping. Client order status updates required a dedicated staff member to call the production floor, compile a status summary, and email it out, which can almost consume four hours per day.
The finance team was spending 12 days per month preparing management accounts from disparate data sources. Leadership decisions were being made on data that was routinely two to three weeks old. And as the company pursued larger enterprise clients, the absence of ERP systems and documented digital processes was becoming a direct barrier to procurement approval, due to this three significant OEM contracts had been lost in 18 months to competitors who could demonstrate compliant systems and digital auditability.
So the management engaged DraconX for a complete IT strategy and transformation engagement. We have researched everything starting with a diagnostic of where the business stood and ending with a fully operational digital infrastructure capable of supporting the next decade of growth.
The Solution
IT Strategy First, Then Transformation: ERP Implementation, Cloud Migration, and Process Redesign
“We built a great manufacturing business on skill and relationships. But we were losing contracts to competitors who simply looked more professional on paper. DraconX fixed that.”
The Impact
A Business Ready for the Next Decade — With the Operational Evidence to Prove It.
Manual reporting effort across the business fell by 73% in the six months following ERP go live. The production planning, inventory management, and client reporting processes that had previously consumed significant management bandwidth now operate with minimal human intervention which is giving some time to the leadership team to focus on commercial development and product quality rather than operational administration.
Delivery performance to clients improved by 29% which is driven by the elimination of planning conflicts, better real-time visibility into production status, and the ability to proactively communicate delays to clients before they became escalations.
The DraconX cost analysis identified huge savings in annual operational. Reduced manual labour costs, lower material waste through better inventory control, and improved purchasing efficiency through automated vendor management. These savings represent a payback period of under 14 months on the total transformation investment.
"We went from running a business on old practices to having real-time dashboards that tell us everything we need to know to make good decisions. The difference is difficult to overstate"