Key details of the changes:

• The Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) limit will be reduced from £100,000 to £25,000 from 1 April 2012.
• The rates of annual Writing Down Allowances will reduce from 20% to 18% for plant and machinery and from 10% to 8% for special rate assets from 1 April 2012.

In brief, what qualifies is any IT equipment that will appear on your balance sheet, including associated costs e.g. professional services to install, configure and make it operational.

Integrys always works closely with its clients to maximise their IT spend and also to ensure their businesses do not lose out on any financial incentives that may be available. In addition to these savings, Integrys is currently offering preferential finance rates and packages through Microsoft to make a saving while also deferring payment.

Please contact us at any time for further information.

You can read the full document here: Overview of draft legislation for Finance Bill 2011.

This is because there is so much more to LEAN than just the shop floor.  Many companies will be aware of LEAN manufacturing and its principles across their business.  For example, in recent years we have seen software-enabled LEAN tools come to the market, including electronic kanbans and so on.

However, we have learned that the principles of LEAN can work well beyond manufacturing and can permeate every aspect of an organisation’s business processes and subsequent performance.

Integrys is very much aware that organisations typically have multiple stand-alone IT systems, countless interfaces, complex information flows and duplication of effort, all of which can lead to loss of control and lack of visibility on materials, production, orders and stock control.

To achieve optimum performance, we recommend that our clients systematically identify and eliminate inefficiencies right across the business. This may also mean looking at management key performance indicators (KPIs) to decide whether they represent the best approach for the business.

For example, one company altered its key performance indicator from production-efficiency to on-time delivery, and their on-time deliveries went from 60 per cent to 95 per cent. They mapped their order-fulfilment process and removed four days’ worth of manpower in loading orders.  This translates into four days’ cash for the bottom line and it also means getting the stock out quicker and improving customer service.

Integrys specialises in Microsoft Dynamics AX. This is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) business management software system that is ideally suited to support LEAN thinking because it provides instant access to up to date, accurate business information at the touch of a button.  It gives managers much greater visibility what is happening throughout their business and enables them to be proactive when the time is right rather than after it is too late

The road to LEAN thinking is a journey of continuous improvement that requires focus and persistence.  However the improved business performance rewards can be staggering and, probably more importantly in these austere times, can save money and improve service to clients.

We love talking about LEAN Thinking so please call us anytime.

Read a more detailed article here: IT Supports Lean Thinking

The news follows the announcement last August of an £8 million investment in a new heavy-duty press and other equipment at Tata Steel’s nearby Dalzell plate rolling mill, in Motherwell, and the recruitment of 60 new workers across the two Scottish plants.

Workers at Clydebridge carry out two processes – quenching and tempering – which strengthen steel plate. The investment – which includes expanding the plant’s two furnaces, and installing two new gas-cutting machines and a new stamping and marking machine – will boost the output from the specialist plant by up to 50% and lead to the creation of about 26 new jobs.

Related Links: Tata Steel invests £8 million in Scotland

We have found that senior executives fail to get to the heart of what is important about their IT systems because those responsible for IT often appear to be talking a different language, which is a view shared by Gartner.

Reassuringly, we have found that the wider business is taking notice and often, for example, we are invited to put down the business benefits on one page of A4 for the whole company to read and understand. After all, something that is so important for the entire business should be written in layman’s terms if it is adopted and executed effectively.

Rather amusingly, in the attached article Mark McDonald points out that when people are asked at a party “What do you do?” we tend to talk about our job title rather than the benefits our role delivers. Mark is obviously keen for us to talk about IT in the language in a wider business context, and we wonder if that’s what prompted him to write the article.

Related Links: Gartner: 12 things everyone needs to know about IT

The detail of the story is that ‘Compound Semiconductor Technologies Global Limited’, the Glasgow-headquartered manufacturer of optoelectronics devices, has secured a six-figure supply agreement with one of China’s emerging tele and data communications developers.

The company, which develops and manufactures customised laser chips for use in industrial, communications and defence applications, is set to double its turnover to £5m within the next three years. The news comes as CST also reaches a production milestone, having manufactured two million high-performance laser chips since acquiring its new manufacturing premises in 2010.

This example of success teaches us that Chinese companies are increasingly looking to develop their own operations beyond pure manufacturing. Even though these markets have been traditionally high volume low cost, Scottish companies are achieving considerable success in working direct with Chinese companies.

Read the full article here: Scottish chip-maker closes deal with Chinese firm

More importantly, SMAS has completed 89 manufacturing reviews and 56 intensive projects with food and drink companies. For example, helping to drive much needed productivity improvements within the sector and increase its competitiveness with international competitors.

Integrys knows Scottish Enterprise well and has met several such companies, and so would encourage all Scottish companies to contact them for further information.

Read the full article here: £21 million boost for Scotland’s manufacturing sector

In each case, limitations that forced workarounds and compromises in older ERP products were lifted, and new capabilities were added to provide an even richer software representation of a business and its structure, processes, and policies.

Unified, natural Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 models make modeling simple businesses fast and easy and yet still provide the richness and flexibility to represent the most complex organizations.

Fundamental elements of the unified, natural models in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 include:

• Flexible business organization modeling, allowing you to capture the physical locations of your business, legal entity structure, and business reporting structure.
• People, with separate modeling of the person, their reporting hierarchy, and their role.
• Declarative representation of business workflow, policies, and dollar limits—and the ability to specialize that policy for different parts of the organization model, without writing code. For example, as a business analyst you have the ability to grant different purchase order approval rules to different legal entities within a graphical workflow editor, with no coding required.