The Planner

Case Study 1:

Nashville Tempered Glass

Nashville Tempered Glass LLC, an Engineered Glass Products company, focuses on bent tempered glass for the agricultural and marine segments, value-added flat tempered and laminated glass (pattern cut, drilled, painted) for specialty vehicles, and just-in-time production for the window industry.

The decision had been made that Nashville Tempered Glass (NTG) was going to move to an ERP system in order to meet demands from existing and new clients. After a selection process, in which it identified an ERP system that best suited its needs for the given selection criteria, NTG focused on improving plant floor efficiencies.

Like many ERP systems, the one chosen had infinite capacity scheduling methodology. It was going to primarily address the material and accounting needs of the corporation.

Due to time and cost constraints NTG knew that choosing a finite scheduling system that was easy to implement and integrate with its main system was of paramount importance. Furthermore, while they understood that unnecessary inventory accumulation, increasing WIP queue, and high expedite costs were inherent in most ERP infinite capacity scheduling systems, they could not afford such luxuries.

"Once we had reviewed The Planner and its capabilities, it was an easy choice," said supply chain director Michael Hobbs. "We didn't have the luxury of spending months setting up and implementing a complicated system. We had already implemented a new ERP system and we wanted to take full advantage of the access to information, but not be constrained by many of the deficiencies associated with infinite capacity scheduling methodologies."

Hobbs said that The Planner was ready to go, out of the box, and was already integrated with the new ERP system.

"It was also easy to use and even easier for our employees to learn and understand," he said.

What Nashville Tempered Glass people are saying about the The Planner. The following report was provided by NTG's supply chain director, Michael Hobbs, and his colleague, Vitomir Radojevic, the company's materials scheduler.

Michael Hobbs:

Implementing a finite scheduling solution was a great opportunity to reduce our cycle times, reduce our rolling raw material stocks, and eliminate waste within the factory. Like many organizations we did not have a full scheduling process in place prior to the new ERP system and installation of The Planner. The actual schedule for any particular day took place in a morning meeting and was subject to change before the end of the day.

Forget about looking at weekly or even monthly schedules. The schedule was too flexible and changes were constant. The effect of those schedule changes on raw material and production demands were routinely not known in the short time it took for a manager to make a decision to change the production schedule.

With The Planner, the effects of a schedule change are immediate. We can now immediately identify which jobs will become late due to a schedule change, and how the desired change will alter the WIP queues.

We felt like the easiest ways of getting our costs in line was to focus on the factory floor. They could not easily assess the implications of changes on other orders in the queue. As a result they were always in a reaction mode in their attempts to meet customer demands. Our employees were routinely reacting to the customers who were screaming the loudest, with no consideration for the impact on other customers. Their system was telling them that they were okay but the reality was that they were late many of the times before the factory even saw the orders.

Vitomir Radojevic:

Before the installation of The Planner we were letting plant people do their own scheduling with no regard to its impact on raw materials, production queues or delivery dates. They did not know all the factors required to determine scheduling priorities as they were concerned only with optimizing setups.

With The Planner we are able to seamlessly integrate data from our MRP system. We can look at a realistic schedule based on actual capacity.

All the information from the ERP system is automatically loaded into The Planner. We knew we had capacity problems with certain machines, but now, with The Planner, we can quantify those problems. We now have the information to determine if we should add machines, add shifts, or seek order confirmation changes where appropriate.

We also have the tools available to tell us when to bring in the material to avoid expediting. Before, if a salesperson came in and asked us to expedite an order we could not tell them what orders would likely move to a late status as a result of the request.

Our sales people are now less inclined to rush orders; if they must request changes at least they can now make better decisions because they have accurate and timely information about the effects on other customers.

The heightened visibility has allowed the materials group to focus on materials and allowed the production department to account for machine availability and uptime all in a coordinated effort to meet our customers' demands.

Michael Hobbs:

This visibility allows us to maintain a more stable schedule, reducing many associated costs. By utilizing the 'Multi-User' functionality everyone with security can now view an approved schedule and take appropriate action to insure we are meeting our customer demands via our production schedule. This has drastically reduced calls to our customer service associates, scheduler and to the factory floor.

Our customer service associates are able to spend time discussing with customers how we can further meet their needs instead of providing excuses why we cannot ship on time. And we have raised our credibility with our suppliers, our customers and our internal partners by being able to give them accurate scheduling, receiving, production and ship dates.

Summary

As a result of implementation of The Planner Nashville Tempered Glass has:

• Improved its inventory turns
• Reduced its WIP queues
• Reduced direct labor and costs
• Increased machine utilization.

Some technical information

• There are more than six hundred pages of documentation provided on The Planner CD.
• Detailed installation documentation.
• Implementation services and expertise available.
• Schedules and reports are available through an internal intranet site using Crystal™ reports. Crystal™ report templates are provided free of charge with the The Planner software.
• The Planner runs under Microsoft Windows.
• The Planner's multi-viewing system will run under MS Access, MS Sql Server, Oracle, or Progress.

Read more about the The Planner and its standard specifications.