Chess Plastics

Autumn Newsletter 2016

Office Refurbishments

Early in 2016 the Directors committed to a major refurbishment program. It was a fantastic opportunity for Chess to revitalise and reinvigorate their whole business as part of their ongoing “New Generation” plan. Chess have to date invested over £65,000 on this 1st Phase and now have all the benefits of new offices giving the business a better, more suitable space for staff to reach their full potential. This has helped us meet and go beyond customer expectations.

Factory News During 2016 has seen continued investment with the installation of three new 500t Canbio machines and a new 650t Vector all with 6 axis Abb robots. Chess are entering the final phase of the “New Generation” investment program with only 3 older machines to be replaced during 2017. As part of the improvement to process, a new 400kw chiller system has been purchased and will be commissioned over the Christmas shutdown .

People News Chess have said a few goodbyes this year . Jill retired after 19 years as a Quality Engineer and we hope she enjoys retirement by the sea. We welcome Allwyn who has taken over the role and is driving Chess towards TS16949 in 2017. Dawn has also moved on after 12 years as she and husband Chris have bought a caravan sales business , we wish them all the best for the future. Katie has filled this role and will be working with Gareth to improve the overall performance of the company going forward .

New work wear

To accentuate Chess’s new corporate colours, new work wear was issued during the summer – Go Orange !

A new fully auto defibrillator unit was installed on the shop floor. Over 30,000 Cardiac arrests a year happen out of hospital and survival falls by 10% for every minute the heart is stopped. Eight 1st aiders have so far been trained so far in its operation.

“Staying Alive”

New MRP and Mattec System

Your order is now complete and ready to ship!

A review of our computer systems was undertaken in 2014 and after discussions with various software suppliers, we decided to implement WINMAN MRP software to integrate with MATTEC Real Time Machine Monitoring.The main drivers behind this were to ensure customer satisfaction with orders delivered on time, live visibility of order progression, stock accuracy and management and efficient planning.MATTEC Real Time monitoring counts each item as it is produced on the machine and highlights any production issues. This live production count transfers directly into WINMAN MRP to update the sales order status and completion time. All finished goods and receipts are now barcoded so that as they are moved between locations, they are constantly traced. The production scheduler within WINMAN is updated every minute based on the live information to highlight any concerns that need addressing.After 18 months of planning, installing new servers and equipment, and uploading data, the new MRP system went live in February and is now fully functional!The future – we will be looking to build on the success of the new solution to make out technology at the front of our selling points! - The next stage will be customer portals to enable inputting of orders and monitoring of their order progress.