ERP Vendor and Manufacturer Both Turn to RM-DB for Flexible Scheduling

User Solutions has announced another successful manufacturing scheduling application for Plastilite. Plastilite Corporation, located in Omaha Nebraska, provides insulated and protective packing solutions to companies shipping perishable and fragile products across the United States. Their containers are now routinely used in transporting everything from Omaha Steaks to pies to vaccines and even biological materials, and the list of uses keeps growing.

In order to continue their growth and improve manufacturing competitiveness, Plastilite decided to implement a new ERP System this year. Part of Plastilite's requirements was to improve their manual planning and scheduling system which, up to that point, was basically one person's hands-on experience of running operations.

Fourth Shift, an ERP system from Softbrands, Inc., was the frontrunner for addressing most of their accounting and inventory needs, however the scheduling module was not flexible or advanced enough to manage the complexities of Plastitlite's scheduling needs.

According to Jon Ehly, Plastilite Chief Financial Officer, Fourth Shift recommended Resource Manager-DB from User Solutions, Inc. as an add-on for Fourth Shift to handle the advanced production planning and scheduling requirements. The combination of many injection molding machines, and with each machine different tool configurations to manage holding different combinations of molds for a variety of products was far too complex for ERP's basic infinite capacity scheduling system.

"We made the decision to go live with both systems in the same week – a process I would not necessarily recommend for the faint of heart. We had started the ERP Training and Implementation months ago then called User Solutions to come on site to help us with the scheduling module. They arrived on Monday and by Friday we had a complete optimized schedule generated with full integration with our ERP System."

Within one week, User Solutions accomplished:

• Breaking down key scheduling data
• Entering routings with alternate workcenters
• Managing variable chest and tool sizes
• Importing open orders from the ERP system
• Generating an optimized, finite capacity constrained schedule
• Exporting updated dates back to synchronize with MRP and Inventory

User Solutions proactively added functionality to select optimal workcenters and corresponding chests and molds without additional charges.

Jon concludes, "It was refreshing to work with a vendor who absolutely delivered on their promise. Initially, they expected to have a prototype of the process implemented in one week. Instead, they were able to fully load the schedule and integrate with our ERP system – all in one week. We strongly recommend for other manufacturing companies, who are struggling with manual scheduling techniques, to give User Solutions and Resource Manager-DB a try."