Precision manufacturing of custom–designed parts is the mission at True North Printed Plastics. Located in Mississauga, Ontario, this firm provides plastic membrane switches and other custom–printed plastic devices to a wide range of customers in the automotive, electronic, and medical fields. The company tracks all of its work orders, every step of the way, with a unique, custom–built FileMaker Pro database application.

Business Challenge

Providing customers with high–quality devices at reasonable cost while maintaining a high output requires a manufacturer to carefully document every step of the manufacturing process. And if that process involves multiple, complex steps, any data management system built to handle the job needs to be flexible, powerful, and easily updated. When True North Precision Plastics made the decision to move its job–tracking system away from paper forms and into the digital domain, a number of potential solutions were considered. "We evaluated Microsoft Access, Omnis, as well as starting from scratch," says IT Manager Andrew Struthers. "Working on a hybrid Mac–PC network, we needed our system to work in both operating environments — and since we were working on tight deadlines with demanding requirements, FileMaker Pro was the clear winner."

Successful Solution

Beginning with a basic production system constructed in an earlier version of FileMaker Pro, the system in use at True North Precision Plastics now stands as an impressive, self–contained, fully–relational application called MARVIN — the Manufacturing and Resource Vital Information Network. It's a package of 57 database files, containing 94 tables, each containing thousands of individual records, and also stores individual images of the various products produced. "Our solution allows the user to easily navigate between parent and child records," explains Andrew, "and to automatically jump between over 40 tables for each new work order, while copying and re–associating the records."

In addition to tracking production and documenting work orders, the system also incorporates a powerful contact management file.

Local and global script variables will make FileMaker Pro 8 much easier to develop on. The ability to set repetition numbers with variables in the set command will also be very useful.

— Andrew Struthers, IT Manager, True North Printed Plastics