Polyurethane Progress Ltd has seen tremendous growth over recent years and has ambitious plans to ensure its place as a market leader within the industrial plastics marketplace. Find out more about the business and the processes it has put into place to continue its success, from our interview with Operations Manager, Tom Brumwell:
Q: Tell us about Polyurethane Progress Ltd
A: Polyurethane Progress Ltd is a family owned company, which has been in the manufacturing industry for almost 30 years. We offer the highest quality in our products with the most advanced designs, material specifications and technical solutions in the manufacturing industry. Operating from a modern processing facility based in Wakefield, West Yorkshire we are constantly producing high quality polyurethane goods with fast turn round times, operating 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Unlike many of our competitors, Polyurethane Progress Ltd operates a full ‘in-house’ system, which means that none of our products are imported – they are all produced onsite.
Q: What is your role within the business?
A: My role is mostly sales based – taking on new enquiries from customers, quotations, order inputting etc. However I also take on other roles too, such as: purchasing, social networking, dabbling in IT support and website projects, to name just a few!
Q: What industry does Polyurethane Progress sit within?
A: Polyurethane Progress are specialists in both cast moulding and injection moulding of Polyurethane and other industrial plastics. Our parts serve industries around the globe at opposite sides of the spectrum. From automotive bush components through to sealing solutions for oil rigs, we can do both mass production and smaller batch production of parts, based on our customers’ needs.
Q: What are your products and services?
A: Our products range from seals to bespoke components, we offer both cast and injection moulding and also have our own in house tooling department, which allows us to take on new enquiries and make the required moulds in house; minimising lead times for our customers.
Q: How many products do you have?
A: In the region on 12,500.
Q: What has the last year been like for you?
A: This last year has seen the company grow at a dramatic rate across the board, allowing us to further expand and future proof our company with a new ERP system – SAP Business One from Signum Solutions.
Q: What made Polyurethane Progress decide to implement a new ERP system?
A: The existing system was disjointed, slow, difficult to use and allowed for too many mistake. Support was lacking too, with required changes or fixes taking an age to resolve.
Q: When is SAP Business One going to be implemented?
A: We are due to begin implementation later this month!
Q: What’s different about the new ERP system?
A: The new system will encapsulate all of the inner workings of the company. Whilst before we had various different procedures in place, some paper-based and others using the old system, everything will now be covered within SAP Business one, which will make it easier for us to operate as a business and easier for our customers to operate with us too.
Also, the solution that we have chosen will be hosted in The Cloud, which means that we are able to save money by not buying, storing and maintaining our own servers.
Q: What are the benefits that Polyurethane Progress are expecting from implementing SAP Business One?
A: We think the benefits will include: increased productivity, fewer mistakes, ease of use and an increase in profitability by having the ability to highlight areas of concern that we currently may be unable to see, due to the limitations of the existing system.
Q: How did you come across Signum Solutions?
A: I was searching for ERP solutions online and found the Signum Solutions website.
Q: What made you decide to partner with Signum Solutions for your ERP project?
A: Their experience in dealing with situations similar to our own, where medium sized businesses had outgrown their current ERP system and needed a robust and long-term solution, gave us the confidence they could successfully implement and support our new system.
Q: Polyurethane Progress is officially Signum’s 50th customer – how does that feel?
A: It’s good to know that we have partnered with a company that has a good level of stability and a customer profile that is well represented by businesses similar to ours. We know that Signum also has 100% customer retention, which is impressive when dealing with 50 different businesses over more than 10 years.
View customer case studies to find out more about how Signum Solutions’ experience within manufacturing and wholesale industries has helped similar businesses achieve streamlined processes and financial benefits, with SAP Business One.
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