New IT system helps Ascari Cars slip into top gear

Emley, UK - 24th August 2006 - Gearing up to meet demand for its new super car, Ascari has overhauled its IT systems to support a substantial increase in production.

Ascari Cars, a British company named after the first double world Formula 1 champion Alberto Ascari, was established in 1994 and its first limited-edition super car, the Ascari Ecosse, was launched in 1998. In the middle of last year, following four years of development, Ascari went into production with a brand new super car, the KZ1. A racing version, the GT3, is already performing well in the newly-established FIA GT3 European Championship series against the likes of Porsche, Aston Martin, Ferrari and Lamborghini, providing a high-profile showcase for the car and boosting demand for the KZ1.

At a cost of nearly £250,000, each 5.0 litre, all-carbon KZ1 is manufactured-to-order and hand-built at the company's Banbury facility. Customers are closely involved throughout the build process and there are a number of variants for interior finish, which also allow for a degree of personalisation. Preserving the exclusivity of the marque means only 50 KZ1s will ever be produced but this still represents an increase in production of up to 100% over the next 24 months, so as Ascari moved from the development phase into production, it needed to upscale its IT system to manage the complexity of its manufacturing process and to support the new demands on the business. It is implementing a fully-integrated manufacturing and financial solution from Access Supply Chain, which is expected to go live inside 12 weeks.

As well as streamlining its current business and manufacturing processes, the system has the capacity to support the company's future product development and growth plans.

"It's an affordable system but it gives us real control and room to grow; it will allow us to take the business forward in leaps and bounds" says financial controller, Jason Cairns.

Automating the entire manufacturing and planning process from the point of sales order request, the Access system will allow the automatic creation of bills of materials for each car (eliminating manual processes and any risk of human error) and allow the company to improve build time, labour usage, production throughput and lead times, whilst gaining better control of stock levels and job costings.

Jason Cairns: "The system will allow us to spot where there are any gaps in our processes and allow us to run a much tighter ship. It gives us a universal view that anybody can tap into at the touch of a button"

The ease of use of the system and the flexible approach of the supplier were deciding factors in choosing Access. "We asked four companies to demonstrate their systems using our data and our users found the Access system the most user-friendly. The Access people demonstrated they had a good understanding of what we do and they answered all the queries we had."

Jason Cairns is already looking at expanding the use of the system with plans for a web shop for Ascari merchandise, as well as a wireless connection from trackside to the stores on race days to optimise the availability of spare parts.