Vernagroup goes live with transformational APS in six weeks

Steve Brownlee, IT director at the Bolton-based company, explains: "Our production facilities are state-of-the-art for our industry, with patented innovative technology and robotics, but our planning systems were cumbersome and unwieldy – relying heavily on spreadsheets and burning a lot of midnight oil." Vernagroup selected Production Modelling's Orchestrate software, because of its intuitive user interface and presentation, which, according to Brownlee, "makes it so much easier to assess different planning scenarios." Brownlee says he has been staggered by "the capability of the software to deal with our complexity, and also how rapidly the team from Production Modelling could configure the system". He reports that a demonstration "first draft" system was configured to Vernagroup's production processes within two weeks. "We have gone from signing off a purchase order to delivering a fully functional solution that delivers absolute benefits in only six weeks," he says, " and that in a situation where we have spent around one third of the cost of the nearest rival solution." Brownlee says Vernagroup is now using Orchestrate for both strategic and day-to-day capacity planning. "Looking two, three, four years ahead, we can assess capacity, any potential restrictions, storage requirements and any demand for additional production capability. We are [also] able to plan weekly and day-to-day production, to meet sales forecasts and maintain appropriate stock levels." And that includes automatically handling constraints such as specific products dedicated to certain production lines, with others handling mixed products, as well as minimising changeovers. "Orchestrate allows us to manage and police which products run on which lines and for how long, maximizing efficiency and throughput," says Brownlee. "What used to take a whole day for a planner can now be accomplished in 20 minutes. That doesn't just mean eliminating the hassle; it means we can afford to run alternative scenarios, knowing that built-in KPI alerts will keep us on track," he concludes.