Benefits for the boys in Brazil

The Preactor Group, provider of Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) solutions for over 17 years, has unveiled a series of major business benefits demonstrated by a number of customers at the Preactor seminars in So Paulo and Porto Alegre.

Held in March 2011, the Preactor seminars sponsored by Preactor partners Tecmaran and ACCERA, attracted hundreds of visitors keen to learn how Preactor production planning and scheduling technology works in the real world. They were left in no doubt of the scale of benefits achievable by the 6 case studies presented from companies in the Automotive, Food, Pharmaceutical and Furniture sectors.

Perhaps most spectacular is the $4m inventory cost savings and $2.5m increased production achieved in a matter of months by Unicasa. A leading manufacturer of kitchen and living room furniture, Unicasa has been established for 25 years and has plants covering approximately 65,000 square metres in the Bento Gonalves area of Brazil. The company had embraced a Just in Time (JIT) methodology as well as investing heavily in new plant equipment to make their production more flexible to respond to customer demands. This highlighted the need for a specialist planning and scheduling system to work in partnership with its existing ERP system to increase productivity and further reduce their inventory levels and become even leaner. In a matter of months, Preactor has helped increase productivity by 9% which represents $2.5m in additional production while simultaneously reducing inventory by over 50%, from a value of $6.5m to $2.5m.

It's a similar situation for Susin Fransecutti, a manufacturer and supplier of camshafts, crankshafts, axles and other parts to the automotive sector. Established for over 50 years, the company is located in Caxias do Sul in the south of Brazil and has used Preactor to increase visibility of the flow of production batches through the plant, reduce run and setup times through better sequencing and provide better synchronisation between departments. Substantial benefits include a 25% increase in productivity, a 50% reduction in delivery delays, a 40% reduction in lead times, and a 15% reduction in work in progress (WIP) which in turn has freed up 30% of space within the factory.

Last but not least are the remarkable results demonstrated by Tabone, a supplier of edging for furniture, white goods and the automotive sector as well as furniture handles and trim. Many of the company's products are manufactured through extrusion or injection moulding and the Tabone planners found it very difficult to agree on production capacity. The company had an ERP system but had to rely on spreadsheets for its production planning and the accuracy of these depended very much on the experience on those who managed them. Furthermore, these spreadsheets could not effectively deal with the multiple constraints in the production process such as tooling which meant there was little control over production. After implementing Preactor, the manual efforts required for planning were halved with delays to delivery reduced by a staggering 63%. Work in Progress (WIP) was reduced by 30% and total setup time by 21%.

Mike Novels, Preactor CEO, is understandably delighted with the success of these South American manufacturers and their use of Preactor.

"South America is a growing market for us. We already have 8 dedicated partners representing in excess of 150 specialists delivering Preactor expertise with over 200 companies using Preactor in Brazil alone. Not only do these spectacular results prove how effective Preactor Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) solutions are in the real world, they also show that Preactor works to enable any existing investment in ERP. Preactor was developed from the outset to enable ERP and these excellent examples in Brazil and South America add to the 120+ documented case studies at http://preactor.com/Case-Study.aspx that prove how APS can benefit businesses of all sizes in many different sectors."