Brazil benefits big time from advanced planning and scheduling

At Preactor seminars in São Paulo and Porto Alegre, last month, companies including Unicasa, Susin Fransecutti, and Tabone stepped up to the plate to record jaw dropping results. Kitchen and living room furniture manufacturer Unicasa, for example, quoted $4m inventory cost savings and $2.5m increased production achieved in a matter of months at its factories in the Bento Gonçalves area of Brazil. The company had embraced JIT and says the change exposed a need for a specialist planning and scheduling system to add to its existing ERP system. Implementing Preactor, it said, helped increase productivity by 9% ($2.5m) while simultaneously reducing inventory by more than 50%, from a value of $6.5m to $2.5m. Meanwhile, for automotive manufacturer Susin Fransecutti, in Caxias do Sul in the south of Brazil, installing Preactor increased visibility of the flow of production batches through the plant. That reduced run and setup times, through better sequencing, and led to better synchronisation between departments. Benefits cited include a 25% increase in productivity, a 50% reduction in delivery delays, a 40% reduction in lead time and a 15% reduction in WIP – which in turn freed up 30% of space in the factory. Then furniture edgings manufacturer Tabone, also in the automotive sector, says it was relying on spreadsheets for production planning, and had run out of power, because of multiple constraints. After implementing Preactor, the manual efforts required for planning were halved and delays reduced by a staggering 63%. WIP was reduced by 30% and total setup time by 21%.