The Planner
Case Study 2:
Sharp Corporation chooses the The Planner
Sharp Corporation is a U.S.-based first class
packaging company catering to the pharmaceutical, personal care, and
nutraceutical industries. The full-range of packaging capabilities
includes blister packaging - Sharp has the industry's largest blister
packaging capacity - pouch/sachet/packette packaging, carded blisters,
bottling, and transdermal patches.
Sharp's scheduling issues with ERP
Sharp completed a successful ERP implementation in October,
1999 using the Manufacturing, Distribution, and Financial modules of an ERP
system. As is the case in most ERP packages it used infinite capacity
scheduling logic in its planning architecture.
Dave Bono, the scheduling manager, was still scheduling the
old-fashioned way using a manual scheduling board. He had to take new
orders out of the ERP system and place them on to the planning board,
and manually update Work In Process. Daily scheduling meetings had to
be held around the board. "You can just imagine the work involved in
updating the board when machines went down or when jobs had to be
rescheduled," he says.
Dave was the focal point for all scheduling issues. He felt as
if he spent more time on the phone, answering questions, than he did in
actual scheduling. And he recognized the need to automate the process.
"I knew it was just a matter of time before I missed placing a job on
the board," he says.
Dave knew that if the company were to grow it was going to
have to more effectively manage the scarce resources of machine and labor. He
also realized that if he could effectively provide customers with
accurate ship dates it would give Sharp a significant lead over its
competitors.
Sharp chooses The Planner
Paul Spaulding, the IT manager, wanted an integrated
scheduling solution."We didn't want to write, support, and maintain an interface
between our ERP software, and our scheduling software," he
says. "We simply didn't have the resources to take on a project of that
magnitude.
You not only have to maintain the interface during the
development phase, you also have to maintain the interfaces throughout the
product's life cycle which includes major- and minor-upgrades of the
ERP software." "Besides," Paul says, "We are in the manufacturing
business, not the software business. We wanted to focus on our core
competency."
Implementation 1. The Conshohocken, PA, plant
Sharp implemented ThePlanner in the Conshohocken
plant first deciding to develop a successful model to roll out to the other
sites. This approach was recommended by the Planner consultants.
The Planner consultants act as the coaches believing the most
effective way of implementing The Planner in multi-plant
implementations is the 'train the trainer' approach.
"Implementation went rather well, once some custom
enhancements were made," said scheduling manager Dave Bono.
A major part of the implementation was ensuring that data that
was needed for scheduling - such as routings and rates - were accurate.
There was no need to pay attention to that information in the past
because everything was offline. "The initial load of the data was
tedious but was necessary to allow us to start with a plan that
mirrored what we were currently using," said Dave.
Implementation 2. The West Caldwell, NJ, plant
Before the new ERP implementation the West Caldwell facility
was running an old version of BPCS. The planning function was performed
using information from BPCS and other sources in Excel spreadsheets.
Planning requirements included scheduling a variety of
different types of machines, while moving them between different production rooms
to meet job-specific requirements including temperature and humidity
control, laminar air flow, Class 2 security, overall square footage,
validation requirements and so on. In addition it was necessary to
configure combinations of machines for some orders and separate the
machines for others.
It was also necessary for The Planner to provide time
in the master production schedule for order reconciliation and customer
releases. And because of tight lot control requirements there had to be
a direct and visible link between the work order for a specific lot and
the specific sales order line for the same lot.
Furthermore, the scheduling process had to be flexible,
providing for quick schedule changes to meet customers' ever-changing
requirements. And even though the plant does comprehensive production
scheduling on a weekly basis, daily schedule changes are essential to
the full servicing of its customers' needs.
The future
Given the The Planner's multi-viewing capability the
company is looking at possibilities of sharing schedules between plants and better
utilizing the overall corporate capacities.
The need for real-time data collection is a natural by-product
of the The Planner implementation. Sharp is now looking at some
solutions.
The company is also looking at ways to use data from The
Planner to better forecast shipments and cash.
What Sharp people are saying about The Planner
The following commentary was provided by Craig Meibach, Materials
Manager, West Caldwell plant.
During the implementation it quickly became apparent that
the basic ERP software provided some constraining factors for
scheduling at Sharp. As an aid to ERP, in addressing our scheduling
requirements, we implemented the Planner software.
Work centers have been established in ERP system for each type
of machine along with a QA work center. A QA routing operation has been created
for each job and the necessary reconciliation and release times
included. A machine list was developed in the Planner containing the
machine number, work center and room number.
After MRP runs in the ERP system work orders are firmed and
imported into the Planner. Once in the Planner, the order is scheduled to a specific
machine. If a machine is moved to a different room, the machine list is
updated and all associated orders follow it to the new room. Orders can
also be re-scheduled to different machine / rooms as required. The
order reconciliation / release time is also scheduled out at this point
to ensure the entire production and release process meets the required
ship date. At the end of each day work-order start and end dates
scheduled in the Planner are exported to the ERP system. The export
updates the ERP work order release and end dates thereby linking the Planner
master production schedule to MRP. During the next MRP run the new work
order dates serve to align all purchase requirements to the master
production schedule.
In addition to the Planner graphic screen we have used
Crystal™
reports to create a comprehensive production report incorporating data
from both the Planner and ERP system. This is a comprehensive report
which links work orders to actual sales order delivery dates. It is used
throughout the facility to manage and expedite orders through various
departments and processes.
The report prints in room number sequence and lists by work
order: Work order # and ID #, Item # and item description, start date, work
center end date, order quantity, quantity remaining, run hours
remaining, lot #, sales order number, sales order due date, crew
staffing and work order status.
Going forward, we will be creating additional Crystal™ reports
for reconciliation / release schedule, a sales forecast by month based on
sales order due dates, and FG inventory projections based on order
completion date vs. sales order due date.
The benefits and advantages to Sharp
The Planner has increased visibility of current production
scheduling throughout the entire company, especially with its ability
to put the plan out on our intranet.
The Planner has given us the ability to do more accurate
capacity planning than ERP allows. We can use data from orders that are
currently in the ERP system and also include information from sales
forecasts to get a picture of machine capacity going as far out into the future as
we want to create orders for.
Charts and graphs in plan view can also be used to measure
capacity.
Information is more reliable. By using a manual planning
system that was not connected to our ERP system it was more likely that work orders
would fall through the cracks and get lost between the ERP and the
schedule. The potential for this increased with our current
organization, which includes more planners.
Easier to generate reports. Once data is manipulated and
distributed, reports can be generated quickly and easily through
Crystal™ reports.
Easy to find work orders for specific items, products, etc.
All you need to do is start typing a product description, a work order number,
an item number, etc. With the prior systems you had to manually search
a schedule board or report to find the order you were looking for.
Some technical information
- The integration between this ERP system and The Planner is
'plug and play'.
- There are more than six hundred pages of documentation
provided on CD.
- There is a detailed installation document.
- Planner consultants provided Sharp with expertise that had
the systems up and running in no time.
- The plants are connected by WAN and have immediate access
to each other's schedules.
- Schedules and reports are available through an internal
intranet site using Crystal™ reports. Crystal™ report templates are provided
free of charge with The Planner software.
- The Planner runs under Microsoft Windows.
- The Planner's multi-viewing system will run under
MS Access, MS Sql Server, Oracle, or Progress.
Summary
- There are more than six hundred pages of documentation
provided on The Planner CD.
- Detailed installation documentation.
- Implementation services and expertise available.
- Crystal™ report templates are provided
free of charge with the The Planner software.
- The Planner runs under Microsoft Windows.
- The Planner's multi-viewing system will run under MS
Access, MS Sql Server, Oracle, or Progress.
Read more about the
The
Planner and its standard specifications.
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