Euroclad weathers manufacturing growth with Preactor

The company, which specialises in the manufacture of rain screen facades and decorative weather resistant building skins for the construction industry, has ambitious plans to double in size. Mike Paley, Euroclad Facades' operations manager, explains why the company sees Preactor production as key: "Like many other businesses, we initially scheduled production using a spreadsheet. However, as the business and the number of orders grew, it became evident that the system wasn't intelligent enough to do all that was required of it." Euroclad found itself not being able to accurately predict delivery dates, duplicating data that already existed in its ERP system and spending too much time manually updating its production schedule. Paley says he called in Preactor distributor The Scheduling Company and charged its consultants with improving forecast accuracy, improving its flow of work through manufacturing and reducing the time spent updating the schedules. Within two months, the system was live and scheduling production, with links into ERP and its barcode systems. And the result is what he describes as a very live, real-time picture of manufacturing. "The drag and drop functionality is very useful for putting in those last minute urgent orders. So is the ability to host the schedule on our intranet so that all employees have visibility of the schedule and an understanding of lead times and demands on resources," says Paley. While still early days, Paley is confident that Euroclad's investment will deliver a reduction in the workload associated with maintaining manual schedules. He also anticipates a reduction in production time through better planning and reduced risk of claims from customers arising from late deliveries.