P
lanning Success story
Contour finds
Preactor
production
planning & scheduling
to be first class
ontour Premium Aircraft Seating dependency involved during the production flow. And Hancock points out that, given the
C
is a premium quality seating process. Contour’s planning manager Leyton variety of manufactured parts, Contour has
supplier to many international Hancock explains that success depends very to deal with many suppliers, some of which
airlines. Headquartered in much on ensuring the right component for are more reliable than others.
Cwmbran, Wales, the £100 the right product is at the right place at the
million turnover company employs 800 right time, with the right resource being In terms of order generation prior to investing
people across its 2 main sites, which operate available to action the next step. in Preactor, Contour used an ERP system
as a mini supply chain with the primary
manufacturing and sub-assembly business
directly supplying the final assembly and
sales business. When Contour decided to
invest in upgrading its existing production
planning & scheduling capabilities, it chose
to source Preactor’s P400.
In addition to a multitude of parts enabling
various seating and sleeping positions, each
seating unit has an audio visual function
and a number of communication options.
In order to ensure the required level of quality
control, 70 per cent of all components are
manufactured in-house, including 90 per
cent of all metal items. Contour typically
manufactures 200 seats per month with each
seat costing up to £85,000. All Contour’s
complex manufacturing is handled by over
40 CNC machine centres, together with
a range of further metal working cells, 6
vacuum forming areas, 10 fabrication related
centres and further departments dedicated
to composites and electrics.
Many of the company’s processes involve
Contour typically manufactures 200
seats per month with each seat
Customisation specific resources that can potentially
costing up to £85,000.
become bottlenecks due to lengthy setup
Every airline requires different levels of times. In some situations, setup times can
customisation to an order. Therefore, in effect, range from 20 minutes to 8 hours, while located in its final assembly site to generate
each order is treated as unique, although an production runs can be as short as 30 orders. This order information was supplied
order may use many existing part numbers. seconds yet as long as 2 days. Optimising to the manufacturing site, from which a
Turnaround per unit is approximately 2 weeks, batches and sequence dependency can meaningful production schedule was prepared.
although there is a large amount of sequence have dramatic impacts on the smoothness of Given the sheer scale of variables >>
22
MANUFACTURING
&LOGISTICSIT March 2009
www.logisticsit.com
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