P
Eurocopter very quickly highlighted three distinct groups of planning and scheduling products on the market: first, those that have a very expensive solution and do not allow you to test it with real data without charge; secondly, those that have a low-cost solution but who will not visit to discuss requirements. Finally there are those that have applications that generate schedules with the required volume of data but in an unacceptable response time of more than eight hours.
One company, Preactor International, stood out from this group. From the outset Preactor showed responsiveness by providing Eurocopter with a model it could use for 15 days. This demonstrated the suitability of the application even with a complex data set and also that the Preactor team had a professional approach to project control. The project was carried out by Segula Conseil Industriel (SCI), a Preactor partner for many years.
Powerful scheduling engine
Bonlieu describes the Preactor solution now in place within Eurocopter. "A scheduler, Thierry Sargan, has been recruited who is today dedicated 100 per cent to the
lanning Success story
planning & sequencing of our assembly lines. It is he who worked with SCI to set up the solution for our needs. Preactor currently manages 45,000 parts that constraints are applied to. Today, we are able to schedule each aircraft in detail with 70 per cent of each assembly included. The interface with SAP was developed by SOPRA and SAP is the reference point for all data. Preactor optimises the schedule and feeds the information back to SAP. Its powerful scheduling engine complements the SAP system.”
Bonlieu maintains that it is not possible to follow Lean Manufacturing without a powerful scheduling solution. "Thanks to Preactor we have been able to implement ‘pull’ and not ‘push’ manufacturing.” And the project has proved a considerable success as he explains. "The Dauphin overall cycle time which was around 28 weeks is now down on average to 19 weeks. The goal is 16 weeks. This is a significant reduction of more than 30 per cent. In addition stocks and work in progress have also been significantly reduced. We now have high quality schedule information. If we ever do have a problem the reason is always related to the quality of the data that was sent in Preactor and not Preactor itself."
Eurocopter: manufacturing in action.
And the future? The Dauphin line is now the benchmark for other divisions of the Group to follow. Bonlieu concluded: “It is clear that Preactor has become the reference tool of our Group for planning and scheduling."
www.logisticsit.com
March 2011
MANUFACTURING &LOGISTICS
IT 35
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