Software helps British Gypsum improve productivity of UK plants

Loughborough, UK - British Gypsum, the UK’s largest manufacturer of plasterboard and dry lining systems has installed a new software system to implement consistent quality processes and improved productivity across its five UK plants, which produce over 150million square metres of plasterboard a year.

Each of the production facilities had used paper-based recording systems of different types, while one had built its own in-house database system. This situation continued until recently, when the company recently decided to introduce a standard process across all its plants.

After evaluating various products, British Gypsum selected Northwest Analytical’s Quality Monitor package, supplied by Adept Scientific. NWA Quality Monitor is a powerful, dedicated solution for shop floor data collection and statistical process control. The package allows standardised workflow processes to be built to match the needs of a specific production line, stores data from multiple workstations in a central database and provides live charting and analysis of quality data.

“Even during the pilot phase, I’ve been able to analyse data at my desk,” said Amanda Nurcombe, company quality systems manager at British Gypsum. “When we complete the roll-out to all the plants we will also be able to compare their performance on different products and share best practices between plants ... [and] as our requirements change in the future, the system is flexible enough for us to incorporate those changes directly into the database.”