On top of your game?

"Our APS [advanced planning and scheduling] system, combined with shopfloor data collection, has given us factory-wide visibility. That means we can instantly see if a job is ahead or lagging, which allows us to react immediately, but more importantly, also efficiently." So says Geoff Youds, plant manager at Lancashire-based plastic fasteners manufacturer Piolax, which serves the automotive industry, and counts BMW, Nissan, Toyota and Honda among its customers. The company originally implemented a K3 Syspro ERP v6.10 system from K3, with the APS module and wireless mobile SFDC, three years ago, to improve production management and provide a platform for growth, and has been building on it ever since. "Since going live, we've also gained better control of order intake and our global supply chain, because we can see trends and adjust batch quantities. So we're now even pre-empting most of the surprise orders." Sounds too good to be true? Although a largely make-to-stock manufacturer, Piolax also manufactures to order, and Youds makes the point that, in what is a fast-turnaround, high-throughput environment, where similar parts are sold in tens of thousands to different OEMs, the scope for complexity is massive. "This system cut through our complexity and made the jigsaw visible. It's also brought our delivery performance up to better than 99%, whereas we were in the late 80s. Our market just wouldn't allow us to exist without this." More of that later, but the scope of his assertions helps to explain why APS has been rising increasingly rapidly up enlightened manufacturers' agendas in recent years. They also point up the software's patent ability to punch so much above its weight: although first developed to help manufacturers improve their OTIF numbers, through computer-assisted scheduling, the fact of enabling plant visualisation and automating factory scheduling opens doors to so much more. Most interesting, perhaps, Piloax and others vouch for APS' central role in improving their all-important ability to respond both fast and efficiently to unpredictable events. Events such as machines going down, parts not available, key staff off sick, or those late, large orders from valued customers – any of which can throw even the best run shopfloors into turmoil. How? Mike Novels, chairman and CEO of APS software specialist Preactor, poses the classic dilemma: "Your production planner says an urgent order has just come in and sales want to know if and when you can deliver. Many manufacturers still use standard lead times, but that's just not good enough now. You need to be able to see what will happen to all the other orders that may share parts, resources or both, if you give the new order a high priority. That's where APS scores: it shows you where the problems will be and helps you to look at alternative routes and combinations to find the best way forward." In short, organisations equipped with APS are more likely to tell you they are on top of their game, and that the modern creeds of 'agility' and 'responsiveness' are in their DNA. Novels tells of one manufacturer in the steel industry that examines five 'what if' scenarios every 20 minutes and picks a new optimum to maintain the correct supply of liquid metal to the machines while minimising holding times and furnace energy. "That company is saving $70 million per year," he observes. Granted, it's an extreme example, and from a process-centric industry, but it raises an obvious question. Why would many manufacturers want to reschedule frequently, if one of the mantras of lean thinking is to focus on the runners – interleaving the repeaters and then the strangers as needed – and size kanbans accordingly? And the answer is: to handle the increasing variability of demand, in terms of product mix and volumes, which limits the applicability of conventional front-loaded manufacturing management. Which leads neatly to another obvious question: who exactly doesn't need APS, then? Novels' answer is interesting: "If a manufacturer has no possibility of improving efficiency or OTIF and can't reduce stock or WIP, then I can't see any point in APS. It's the same if a factory doesn't need to load up orders weeks or months ahead, or if the load isn't variable or capacity can be changed quickly to match load. Or if the plant has very short turnarounds and no constraints, or the turnarounds are so fast that visibility into the future isn't helpful." But he also refers to factories that don't have, and can't or won't get, the data any APS software needs to function. "Some manufacturers just don't hold the details of their resources, process steps etc – it's all in the planner's or supervisor's head. It's also quite common to find an ERP system in and working, but only using the financials, because the manufacturing modules were never implemented. And then there are the project-based engineering companies, where process routes are only firmed up near production time." For the rest, though, Novels makes the point that whiteboards simply aren't flexible enough to cope with the shopfloor realities. They may be fine for managing continuous improvement, but they're not geared up for change. Similarly, spreadsheets are fine, not lest because they're free – but you're going to struggle to perform 'what ifs', they're nothing like as visual as Gantt charts, and you'll be restricted to dealing in buckets of time. The good news is that Preactor is doing for planning what spreadsheets did for accountants. WM can reveal that the firm is about to launch Preactor Express – a cut down, standalone version of Preactor 200 that's absolutely free to download. Novels says users will find the database size is unlimited and they can import their own manufacturing data via Microsoft SQL, identify primary finite resources, shift pattern etc, and then start scheduling, using Preactor's new interface, with drag and drop, and very visual Gantt charts. In an exclusive interview, he said: "Express doesn't go quite as far as Preactor 200," explains Novels. "So you can't configure it with additional fields, for example. But it does backwards and forwards sequencing, and provides all the statistics that you can't get from spreadsheets, as well as standard Preactor reports." And if, after spending some time with it, the Express version is not quite enough, for a small licence fee, manufacturers can upgrade to Preactor 200 – which provides for secondary and linked resources, and enables integration with ERP systems – or on up through Preactor 300 (multiple resource types) and 400. So that knocks spreadsheet scheduling on the head, but should you invest time, even in this free software? International Greeting Cards' technical director Mike Harris says an unequivocal yes. "We have grown from £20m to a £70m company, doubling the number of our converting [cutting and rolling] machines and handling more SKUs with much larger jobs, while reducing our planning department from 12 to five… People used to collate all the work sheets from the production floor and manually update the plan, which would take in excess of two hours each time. Not only does this now take just two clicks of a mouse, but it's also always accurate." Preactor APS was central to that improvement on a production floor where accurate timing and visibility of incoming paper and card stock from suppliers are vital, not only to guarantee delivery deadlines but also to prevent chaos. And the same goes for delivery of printed product to the cutting and finishing area, and for despatch of finished goods. With finite capacity constraints, a requirement to deal with short-term changes to very large orders and a very intense Christmas peak period, IGL says Preactor is business critical. It's a different, but just as compelling story at Nicholl Food Packaging, which supplies aluminium foil containers to the likes of Heinz, Danone, Unilever and Manor Bakeries. Operations analyst Chris Scattergood explains: "Prior to our Preactor upgrade we would keep between three and four weeks usage of raw foil stock on site, with this rising to six weeks in our busy Christmas period. Though there have been many other initiatives, Preactor has undoubtedly played a large part in enabling us to reduce this to one or two weeks' usage. Also, in terms of finished goods, some stock levels have been reduced from over three months worth to less than three weeks. Also, because of information from Preactor, stock levels of certain products have been increased to capitalise on short-term promotions and unpredicted sales." Further, APS has given this firm time to think strategically. "Previously, I would spend most of the day dealing with short-term scheduling issues. Now, I can do everything much quicker, so freeing up my time to look strategically at further ways we can improve our systems and efficiency," says Scattergood And he adds that NFP also saves time by being able to group orders together on the shopfloor to maximise employee usage and optimise tool sequences. Meanwhile, for pharmaceuticals contract manufacturer Universal Products Manufacturing, the APS transformation was different again. Planner Alison Walmsley says implementing Preactor resulted in the company's first coherent production plan – with all jobs at every process stage finally visible, along with all problems and what needed to be done to fix them. "And because the planning rules were built into the system, it stopped us making avoidable planning mistakes, such as trying to fill a liquid before the liquid is made," she adds. Additionally, Walmsley makes the point that works order start dates on the firm's Sage ERP system are now updated from APS – which means that MRP is driven by an achievable plan, leading to confidence in the system that allows less use of buffers and lead times. Just as important, she observes that the system has also brought much greater flexibility and agility to UPL, not least the ability to soft allocate resources against works orders that can then be hard allocated as and when the planner requires. So what about Piolax's APS-driven experience? Youds explains that one of this manufacturer's primary activities is thermoplastic injection moulding – with 32 machines on the floor ranging from five to 250 tonnes and capable of running 24/7. "Obviously, each group of moulding machines can only receive a certain tool size: we've got 350 live tools, so that's around 70 in each range. But some of the machines also have specific equipment, such as robots, hot runner systems or master batch dosing units. So we built the planning system to recognise each tool as part of a set, associated to these ancillaries and the relevant machines. So now, when the demand comes up, Syspro APS selects the right tool set, including ancillaries, and then looks across all machines to find the best available match – optimising against capacity, due date etc." Interestingly, Youds adds that the optimised production plan is also open to some manual manipulation, if supervisors see opportunities for improvement when the jobs are loaded. That works because Piolax also invested in a very flexible wireless Andon system (deriving from Toyota's Jidoka quality control methodology), with large displays dotted around production. So the shopfloor, like everyone else, can physically see the production plan, and zoom into cycle times, output numbers, maintenance requirements, machine status etc. "APS may plan a job on a machine but, for example, we haven't yet coded it for some of the newer materials – nylons, PVCs, PPEs etc – and sometimes there are preferential sequences, in terms of machine set-up. But the fact that planning is so visible means the guys can see it and work with it," explains Youds. Given the changing nature of material technology, that's probably the best way to handle this parameter. Then, at the other end of the planning horizon, Piloax's APS is not only taking account of the long lead times implicit in buying assemblies from Japan, America, Thailand, Korea, but also helping management to see trends that, in the past, wreaked havoc with supposedly stock items. "When you get surprise orders for 100,000 items-plus, your stock can be wiped out in one fell swoop, which puts its own strains on production. But now we're in control of the game and the system helps us to predict those orders and their supply chain implications. We're dealing with the problem because we've got so much more visibility." His only advice to APS wannabes: "Watch out for your BoMs and make sure you get buy-in from the board and the shopfloor. We assumed our BoMs were 99% accurate but they were all over the place, due to drawing changes, materials changes, new tools etc that hadn't been updated. Thatl took about two months." Tellingly, he concludes: "There isn't a 'don't need it' argument for a system like this. It's how you make use of it that matters. We find it extremely useful and almost every day it's helping us to find new ways to make the business more responsive."