Intelligent Manufacturing € September € 1996 € Vol. 2 € No. 9

Steel Warehouse Increases On-Time Delivery

Steel Warehouse Co. (South Bend, Ind.), a processor of cold roll and hot roll steel for manufacturers and steel mills, has implemented an intelligent scheduling system to improve customer satisfaction while managing manufacturing operating expenses. The company needed to improve its capacity management, specifically in the areas of order promising and production scheduling. They needed an improved capacity management system to provide accurate insight into expected performance in terms of order completion and production resource utilization. They wanted to make decisions to best meet customer service while minimizing manufacturing expenses. More realistic work plans would allow better communication of decisions to the people who must execute the plan.

To that end, Steel Warehouse selected the Factor Production Manager scheduling system from Pritsker Corp. (Indianapolis, Ind.) to help them manage key orders and resources; approve selected overtime; determine priorities; and more efficiently coordinate production. The application encompasses all production processes in the South Bend facility. The scheduler is part of an integrated systems environment that includes an order entry system and a work-in-process tracking system. Since customer orders vary in combination of processing steps, quantity of steel and source of steel, each order has a unique routing.

The application is configured to automatically regenerate a new schedule each night. This schedule is waiting for production management at the start of the day shift. The order promising environment is also configured with the latest set of firm orders to support the sales force in providing realistic, achievable delivery dates for new orders.

Steel Warehouse realized significant benefits from their implementation of a finite-capacity scheduling system. They improved on-time delivery of orders from 62% to 87%. This improvement is continuing, with a goal of 95%. Customer satisfaction was also improved by providing realistic order delivery dates as an order is placed.

The Factor installation enabled Steel Warehouse to reduce the time spent developing schedules and plans. This leaves the company more available time for problem-solving and long-term improvements. They also realized an increased consistency and completeness in order entry, a by-product of the requirements of the scheduling process.

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