Custom job shop says APS package offered simple solution to complex problems
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 12/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
When a boost in business started creating order backlogs, Xtek, a Cincinnati-based supplier of custom gears to steel mills and other users of complex industrial equipment, sought a more sophisticated method of scheduling and tracking production orders.
"We knew there had to be a better way than simply responding first to the customers who screamed the loudest," says Patrick Casey, Xtek's chief process engineer.
Its search for an advanced planning & scheduling (APS) application produced the names of only four vendors that appeared capable of managing the complexities of Xtek's job-shop-oriented business. And two of those were eliminated soon after Xtek began reviewing the systems.
It was only after a second round of demos for the remaining two packages that Xtek had confidence that the Na View APS system from RSS Solutions could solve its scheduling problems. "It was during the second demo that I realized I could do things in [Na View] that I couldn't do in the other system," Casey recalls.
The most important, according to Casey, was scheduling individual jobs in different ways. "I could schedule job 1 from the due back; job 2 from today forward; and job 3 from a midpoint based on machine constraints. With every other system, you have to schedule either forward or backward."
Casey says Xtek needs this flexibility to meet customer delivery dates for all orders—no matter how simple or complex—without being drowned in work-in-process (WIP) inventory.
"We do some jobs that are not very difficult, and it doesn't make sense to do them today if they are due three months from now," Casey explains. "On the other hand, we have jobs that are difficult to complete and we want to start them right away so that any delays that crop up don't affect the delivery date."
A month after installing Na View, Casey says, Xtek had reduced its order cycle times by 50 percent and cut WIP inventory by more than $800,000.
Michael Cox, president of RSS Solutions, says Na View fit Xtek's needs because it was built specifically as a scheduling tool for make-to-order job shops. One of the system's core features is a routing control language that Cox says contains syntax for describing and executing typical job-shop functions. "We have a library of these language commands that was started by working with a customer, and that has grown over time in response to new customer requests," Cox says. "They provide simple solutions to complex problems."
Xtek uses some of these language commands—which Casey likens to macros—to make sure that operations like moving treated metal from the furnace to a quench tank and then to a freezer always happen in the proper time frame.
Casey says Na View's ability to accurately model Xtek's processes, and use those models for "what-if" analysis, has proven even more helpful. "We can schedule work based on what we expect to sell over the next year and then run a simulation to see how that affects our operations," he says. "We can see where the bottlenecks will occur."
That tool has allowed Xtek to plan the purchase of five additional machines, and the hiring of at least 10 new employees without fear of ending up with excess capacity or inventory, Casey says.
