News Release

MINWA (AUST) BUILDS ON MANUAL HANDLING SOLUTIONS

Neil Ronaldson, managing director of MINWA (Aust), sees his company's growth coming increasingly from the hospitality sector and products which address the needs of an aging population. The new Cardinal Bed has been developed to aid hospital patients and their carers obtain a more comfortable and beneficial outcome. The M1 by B & G™ ERP software has enabled MINWA (Aust) to achieve effective business management in a medium sized manufacturing business.

MINWA (Aust) Pty Ltd is a well established manufacturer of trolleys, stillages, storage and manual handling and distribution products for the likes of major retailers and the hospitality sector.

MINWA currently employs about 30 people and managing director and co-founder of the company Neil Ronaldson says he is particularly optimistic about the future.

"We are a very flexible business and we offer our clients the ability to create practical solutions to manual handling problems."

For instance MINWA has recently developed a new style of hospital bed dubbed the "Cardinal" Total Care Turning Bed (TC Bed).

Designed to provide improved patient care outcomes and assist in reducing the physical and emotional needs of nursing highly dependant people, the Cardinal Bed is quite revolutionary.

It offers the ability to turn a patient from side to side in a turning cradle, providing continuous weight transfer for the patient, thus reducing the incidence of pressure sores, infection, pneumonia and other pulmonary complications.

There are also obvious occupational health and safety benefits for nursing staff.

To aid carers the Cardinal bed offers programmable turning functions with the first providing one turning motion every six minutes and ten turning motions to complete a one hour cycle.

For patients able to operate the bed themselves, the hand control offers personal repositioning to suit the desired level of comfort.

The Cardinal bed developed by MINWA uses a series of 24 volt Linak motors to power the repositioning movements of the cradle.

"We currently have the Cardinal Bed undergoing evaluation at several major hospitals and aged care facilities and we believe it will be an important new product innovation for us" Neil Ronaldson added.

As a co-founder of the MINWA business, Neil brought many years of accounting and business management experience, having previously been company secretary of a long established manufacturing group.

"I recognised that in today's business environment the best management information and project control is critical.

"I started to investigate ERP programs which would suit a company of our scale.

"I was alerted to the M1 by B & G™ ERP software developed by local Melbourne company Bowen & Groves and my initial evaluation indicated it could address our requirements.

"We installed the software and it has been a major contributor to our growth and expansion over the last couple of years.

"The M1 by B & G™ software modules address all our requirements, the general ledger, accounting functions, purchasing, payroll modules etc are excellent, but it is the manufacturing project control modules from quoting to bill of materials, project scheduling and invoicing which really benefits us.

"For instance, I can determine a job cost at any point of time.

"While it is an excellent ERP program for a company of our size I am confident it would also be a practical benefit to many larger manufacturing businesses" Neil Ronaldson added.

He noted also the strong back up support provided by Bowen & Groves together with the regular software upgrades which have addressed the regular changes in the business environment.

"We see our future growth coming from the hospitality sector and from innovative products like the Cardinal TC Bed which we have developed.

"With the M1 by B & G ERP software I am confident that we have the back up and management information resources to meet our objectives" Neil Ronaldson said.

For more information on the MINWA (Aust) product range see www.minwa.com.au

About Bowen & Groves

Bowen & Groves is setting the standard in Enterprise Resource Planning software (ERP), for the small to medium manufacturer. Founded in 1992 Bowen & Groves is a privately owned software development company operating in the United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. M1 by B&G™ sets the standard in affordability and ease of use. Bowen & Groves can be reached at sales@bowen-groves.com or via their website, www.bowen-groves.com