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Pilkington Glass is world renowned for its product quality & reputation in the glass industry, such a significant brand needs a robust & reliable planning & scheduling system to support its market position.The solution was a tailor made solution provided by RMS using Preactor. Mike Large, Pilkington logistics controller, enthuses "Most off the shelf systems only offerred 50% of what I wanted, the system from RMS delivers 97% of what I want. The scheduling problems experienced by Pilkington prior to the Preactor solution affected its whole operation. With regard to raw materials stock handling, a sizeable amount of the glass produced requires costly raw ingredients including rare earth materials such as silver and titanium oxide. Too much stock equates to problems with cashflow. With regard to finished goods stock control, Mike recounts "it wasn't unheard of for people to make more glass rather than check to see if any was already made" The process of glass production at Pilkington is complex, covering a wide range of product specifications, manufacturing & market requirements: Product Range of over 3000+ items Product variations from 60 microns to 2 metres thickness Market diversity from camera lenses, defence, space, nuclear Production facility with 3 furnaces operating 24x7x365, 2000 tonnes pa Production processes that can be up to 6 weeks per block Expensive raw materials & finished goods stock Old system that was paper based, not flexible & responsive Schedule changes were problemmatic (especially with furnace problems) Changeovers that can take up to 5 days(any run off glass is waste) Scheduling mistakes or incapabilities could cost 10's to 100's of £000's The old paper based system was manually updated and often whilst an update was being made a second change would be required before the first one was complete. Most off the shelf solutions would only offer 50% of what Pilkington required. Pilkington searched the market high & low for solutions, but found most were too inflexible and expensive. They even considered implementing an in-house development. RMS System now delivers 97% of what Pilkington want RMS were willing to work with Pilkington to tailor a solution 1 day consultation showed standard Preactor would satisfy 50 % Tailored Preactor would satisfy 75% Rest of the solution was new development for RMS & Preactor Solution is Preactor APS with 4 viewer systems at plant level Changes can be viewed instantaneously Datalink between Pilkingtons UNIX based customer & stock management system & Preactor, that provides 2 way dataflow projections based upon sheduling changes, that reflect effects on customer & stock information. Mike Large, Pilkington's Logistics controller comments: " To a larger company, I would just be an invoice number. Using Preactor & RMS allows much more flexibility & attention with a willingness to develop a solution where previously ther has been no such solution" Benefits Preactor System has brought include: Minimised stock control Supply chain management issues "smoothed" out Schedule changes implemented immediately Reports are instant & emailable Hour by hour changes can now be implemented Substantial time & financial savings Massively reduced reaction time to order changes Delivery promises fulfilled Preactor International is proud of the exceptional system in place at Pilkington & the integration & installation work carried out by RMS. Mike Novels, MD of Preactor elaborates " Our Open Planning Board ® technology ensures that we can tackle very difficult scheduling problems. Very often, applications in the process industry have both batch & continuous elements & the scheduling system must be able to be customised to meet the unique requirements of the user without huge consulting fees being involved. RMS has a great deal of experience in installing Preactor & this is why they were one of the first parteners in the UK to be an accredited Preactor Solutions Provider. Comparatively small companies like RMS are very much customer centric. They live on recommendations of others." Mike Large echoes these views, asserting that the development work by RMS still represents a substantial cost saving over the initial purchase price of the competition that would have only provided 50% of the solution. With a minimum of 3 further phases Mike Large concludes "The service from RMS has been second to none, I will be upgrading with Preactor in the future" |
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