Olson International slashes overtime on advanced planning and scheduling
1 min read
US precision metal-stamping manufacturer Olson International reckons it has saved more than 80% on its standard overtime expenses and nearly wiped out premium freight costs through what it terms “lean manufacturing scheduling software”.
Specifically, the company, which serves the automotive, electronics, garden, computer and communications industries, says that APS (advanced planning and scheduling) software from Infor – as well as the rest of its SyteLine ERP – are the reasons for its dramatic cost reduction across its production floor.
Olson chose Infor SyteLine as its first ERP system back in 1992. After more than a decade, it realised that industry-wide changes in technology and customer expectations were challenging planning and scheduling – which at the time involved lengthy manual processes.
Olson went back to SyteLine for its ERP and bought SyteLine APS to automate the processes, managing everything from inventory levels to employee and resource availability.
“SyteLine APS lets us take a more proactive approach to customer service,” says Olson corporate MIS manager Greg Keating. “The more integration and automation we have between our three facilities, the more we can focus on innovation and constant improvement. We’ve even begun sending SyteLine APS data to our critical suppliers to use for forecasting and planning their production. This has helped our suppliers meet our needs, which is vital to our success.
“With global price pressures and annual push-backs from automotive customers, we have to do what we can to sustain profitability; lean manufacturing and SyteLine APS help us do that. With our focus on lean manufacturing, we look for waste and remove it from our processes. Through automation for forecasting production schedules, we’ve eliminated a lot of wasted time and costs – such as overtime and premium air freight – from our production scheduling.”
Olson’s improvements can now be seen beyond the shop floor – on the company’s balance sheet. After adopting the solution, the company’s quarterly overtime costs have fallen from $40,000 to less than $7,900. Premium-freight costs are down from $37,000 to just $1,200, a 97% cut. On the production floor, Olson has reduced “days in inventory” by two and has increased on-time deliveries from 97% to 99.8%.
