Tower Automotive slashes 65% stock on Preactor and QAD

The firm, which manufactures engineered structural metal components and assemblies, says production planning and scheduling has been transformed. "In retrospect, I see the fact that production was launched along with planning as very positive. It was a great advantage for us in terms of time saved, with the preparation of data for planning and launching of new items being evenly distributed in time," comments Tower planning and purchasing manager Marian Szabo. She explains that, previously, the company had been making its plans manually, with the help of Microsoft Excel, which was very labour intensive – taking 10 hours per day for just one plan. Now, with a recent upgrade to Preactor v11, the complete planning process takes one hour a day. WIP has also been massively reduced, while order fulfilment and machinery downtime have seen comparable improvements. Szabo cites the reduction in stock turnover, which used to be 25 days and is now only nine days, as one of the most impressive benefits.