Owens Corning, a global leader in insulation, roofing, and fiberglass composites, aimed to implement a scheduling solution for its roofing and insulation manufacturing businesses. The goal was to eliminate legacy tools and quickly provide a solution that met the distinct challenges of each business. For the roofing business, the challenges included modifying scheduling settings for products and periods of supply, and using a product wheel for the sequencing of products that consider changeover considerations in the setup mix. For the insulation business, the challenges were to minimize raw materials waste when manufacturing different SKUs of insulation, determine the best co-products to make that will meet demand and minimize excess trim, and schedule long runs that promote steady-state operations and reduce the need for changeovers.

Perstorp, a global leader in the specialty chemicals market, wanted to visually understand in near real time how well their plants were meeting production goals relative to targets. They needed a system that could deliver important production KPIs, such as “Loss vs. Plan”, and allow the user to analyze production results in more detail. The company also wanted to implement features like automated emails and/or phone text messages that could be triggered either by events, such as plant shutdowns, or time-based (e.g. weekly reporting), which could be used for automatic ordering of some raw materials and predictive maintenance.

Genesis Consulting was approached by one of the top 25 global independent oil producers to develop a redeployment strategy for its Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit Global Producer III. The offshore deployment of the FPSO presented a number of challenges due to deeper waters, distant locations, smaller oil fields, and the complexity and unpredictable consequences of offshore deployment. It was costly, logistically challenging and often hazardous, typically requiring a highly skilled team of engineers to make several trips offshore to achieve first oil. Genesis knew that the best way to overcome these obstacles was to test and commission the FPSO — especially its new process control system — while the unit was still in dry dock.

Dow Chemical manufactures more than 3,300 products at 156 manufacturing sites in 37 countries and delivers a range of plastics, chemicals and agricultural products to customers in 160 countries. Many production facilities work with packaged, small-capacity containers that look alike from the outside but contain raw materials that are chemically different. If a container is misidentified and the wrong material is added, a process upset occurs, adversely impacting product quality, material and asset utilization, or causing a health, safety and environment incident. Dow’s objective is to greatly reduce the risk of a process upset and move their operation from two to six sigma performance. Dow faced a number of challenges. Raw materials enter and exit the process at different times and from different locations. The control system is unable to differentiate between the various containers and materials, and human detection is unreliable.

As Oil States Industries expanded internationally, they needed additional functionality not available in their older version of glovia to continue effective support of their operations. The company needed to gain tighter control of their inventory and increase operational responsiveness to maintain their competitive advantage. Their older version of glovia became very difficult and time intensive to navigate due to the tremendous number of customizations created during the initial implementation. Oil States needed to streamline their customizations and enhance the system to gain better control and visibility into their supply chain and keep up with the increasing demand for their technologies, products and support. In addition, as their business expanded internationally, the need for having glovia in multiple currencies and languages was becoming apparent and the older version did not have these capabilities.

Ten Cate Enbi, a company that specializes in manufacturing plastic and rubber components for office and domestic equipment, faced a significant challenge in managing its global operations. The company operates factories in various locations worldwide, including the US, Mexico, Hungary, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Singapore. This global presence allows Ten Cate to take advantage of currency fluctuations and produce local variants of products at competitive prices. However, managing such a widespread operation required an accurate real-time view of all aspects of the business. The company needed a multilingual, multi-currency system to support its factories worldwide. Furthermore, the company's strategy of acquiring and developing complementary businesses to extend its product range and market penetration required a flexible ERP system that could adapt to new business models.

Five Star Airport Alliance, the largest privately held baggage handling systems manufacturer in the United States, was facing challenges with its multiple legacy systems that were not fully implemented and were unable to effectively support the company’s operations as it continued to grow. The company needed a solution to replace their disparate applications, provide greater operational visibility and improve their sales process. The company was looking for a single solution that could manage all of their enterprise needs. It was of the utmost importance that the new solution they selected fully support their make-to-order (MTO) and engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing environments, while also providing greater visibility to better manage their operations.

Keihin Corporation, a principal manufacturer for Honda, was facing a business problem where their three North American facilities needed a single solution to replace their existing, individually procured applications. This was necessary to support the increasing fluidity of customer schedules. The company was operating in an intensely competitive industry and needed to have quick and accurate information. Their customer schedules were very fluid and they were becoming more so by the week, month, and year as the car makers continued to respond to increasing consumer demands. In 1995, one of Keihin’s pre-merger companies, Indiana Precision Technology (KIPT), realized they were wasting time and duplicating effort by using standalone PCs running a variety of individually procured applications. The rapid growth and associated disjointed applications, combined with more stringent and fluid customer schedules, made an imperative case to change business processes and implement an ERP system with the goal to streamline operations, increase operational responsiveness, and meet customers’ growing demands as effectively as possible.

DEK Printing Machines Ltd, a member of the Dover Technologies group of companies, provides state-of-the-art precision screen printing systems and pre-placement process solutions to the electronic assembly market. The company needed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that would easily fit around its manufacturing operation. DEK also wanted a solution that has a fast implementation timescale and to resolve critical millennium compliance issues the company was facing with its legacy systems. The company found that having installed a complete internal card-driven Kanban just-in-time (JIT) system it needed an ERP solution that would easily fit around its manufacturing operation.

NSK, the world’s second largest supplier of bearings, faced a significant challenge following a merger with another major bearing manufacturer, RHP. The newly formed organization, known throughout Europe as NSK, needed an integrated ERP system to provide a common system across its many plants in Europe. The company was looking for a solution that would not impose constraints on or demand changes to its existing efficient manufacturing operations. The system also needed to handle NSK's 27-character part referencing system without modification. The challenge was to implement the new system across five UK sites within an eighteen-month period.

Munters Americas, a world leader in humidity control, was looking to maintain their competitive advantage in an industry that is constantly demanding faster, cheaper, and more efficient ways of conducting business. They examined their operations to determine how they could improve processes and further streamline operations. The company focused on making improvements to the order management process to enable both internal customer service representatives and external customers to place and track their orders through the Internet. They wanted to improve customer service, reduce internal costs, and provide a proactive eBusiness tool for customers and internal users.

The company was operating on an outdated version of glovia, with numerous decentralized applications making them very difficult to monitor and coordinate. The more than 3,000 customizations made the system cumbersome to navigate and lacked the ability to have important information available in real-time. The company had to create countless customizations to continue effective utilization of glovia. This made the system difficult to navigate and many of their functions had to be done manually.

Trimm Technologies, a leading manufacturer of high-performance computer storage subsystems, was looking to respond faster to customers’ needs. The company needed a leading-edge system to improve materials planning requirements and a more flexible production capability. The company was also looking for a system that could support existing and new business opportunities anywhere in the world. The company's original stock control functionality was unable to adequately forecast product or materials requirements, which invariably led to excess inventory on some component lines and inadequate stock on others.

Kemco Manufacturing, a St. Louis-based company that produces aerospace parts for the military, embarked on a diversification project in 2004 to become a global contract manufacturer for aerospace and other manufacturers. In 2003, the majority of Kemco revenue came from Department of Defense work. However, the pendulum of the aerospace industry was moving to commercial. Seeing this as an opportunity rather than an obstacle, Kemco set out to re-brand their image in order to diversify their services and customers, and used technology to increase their competitiveness. A key factor in Kemco’s success was the implementation of JobBOSS, business management software for contract manufacturers, coupled with Amplify Technologies Partner Synchronization Services (APSS), an integrated supply chain analytics tool that integrates directly to JobBOSS.

In early 2003, Gamma Vacuum spun off from a larger company that made multiple products and used several job shop management tools. As an independent new business, Gamma Vacuum took the opportunity to review available job shop software solutions with a goal of finding a solution to better manage its newly-focused business delivering the best ion pumps in the industry. Having used JD Edwards at the company from which they had just spun off, Gamma Vacuum decided to evaluate MAS 90 along with JobBOSS. Gamma chose JobBOSS based upon its ability to meet all of the company’s immediate job shop needs at a price point that was far better than the competition. Most importantly, JobBOSS delivered out of the box what would have taken considerable time to get up and running with MAS 90.

XL Machine, a high-volume manufacturing shop serving several industries, was facing issues with inventory management. The company was producing costly, high-end parts, making inventory critical for eliminating waste and maintaining profitability. However, there was no consistent method of tracking inventory, either for raw materials or finished parts. This lack of inventory tracking could potentially lead to a loss of about a million dollars a month in product. Additionally, XL Machine management wanted to implement a system that could track all of their capital, including human and financial. They were looking for a system that could integrate complete scheduling, costing (for both materials and labor), and finance.

Roncelli Plastics, a successful plastics machine shop, faced a significant decline in profitability after September 11, 2001. The company's management lacked transparency, and there was no clear understanding of revenue by sales rep or new customer profitability. By the end of 2001, the company's margins were thinning, and markets were shrinking, putting the future of the business at risk. The company's owner, Gino Roncelli, was determined to ensure the company's future and began to consider changes in the company's philosophy and operations.

San Diego Precision Machining (SDPM) was experiencing rapid growth and found that its legacy ERP system could not keep up. The company's owner, Jason Matteson, had plans for further expansion but realized that their existing ERP system wouldn't support this growth. The existing vendor's focus was on traditional MRP rather than ERP for job shops, and despite releasing several new versions, there was no new functionality. Furthermore, the support offered by the vendor was poor. Matteson knew he had to look for a new solution or abandon his growth plans. Despite the previous vendor's efforts to accommodate their needs, SDPM found JobBOSS was a premier solution that could continue to evolve with them.

Serapid, a manufacturer of products and systems for the precision movement of heavy loads, was previously using spreadsheets to create a Bill of Materials (BOM) based on the CAD model of parts it was making. Each job would get its own sheet, and then the data would be integrated into a larger master file used for purchasing supplies. This manual method took a long time to complete because various amounts of information had to be inputted, and company engineers had to “translate” to purchasing managers what exactly they wanted. Even small jobs with 20 or less components took an hour to fill out because of the number of steps and manual entry involved. Larger jobs tended to be too much of a hassle to enter the full BOM.

Michigan Ladder Company, a family-owned business in Ypsilanti, Michigan, has been experiencing steady growth for decades. However, despite the recession, the company is preparing for the future by making more advanced use of Exact Software’s Macola Progression®, their ERP system. The company implemented Macola ten years ago but has never used it to its full capacity. In early 2009, it became apparent that employees needed more system training for greater ERP proficiency. The challenge was how to afford comprehensive training for their 20-person workforce. Hiring an on-site consultant or traveling to attend class was too costly. Past training from their reseller had proved ineffectual. The company needed a way to provide high-level training at a low cost.

Forrest Machining Inc., a woman-owned aerospace machining and assembly shop, had to adapt to a significant shift in its customer base. Previously, the company's business was made up of approximately 40 percent of government accounts. However, this has now increased to nearly 90 percent. This shift necessitated a higher level of precision and compliance with government standards and requirements. The company needed to improve the accuracy of Shop Floor Labor Data, achieve real-time Job Costing information, streamline Payroll and labor reconciliation, and determine Direct and Indirect labor dollars. All these were critical to pass government policies that scrutinize job processes and costs.

Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) is a highly successful professional stock car racing team that builds everything in-house to keep their designs proprietary and continue winning races. However, as the team grew from one engineer and 15 total employees in 1991 to 560 employees operating 30 CNC machines in a 400,000 square-foot race shop, they faced challenges in managing inventory and scheduling. They needed a software solution to guide them on inventory and scheduling as they were previously tracking production on spreadsheets and manually shuffling folders to manage their schedule and inventory. The team also needed to accommodate emergency jobs, stop running out of parts, and generate orders automatically based on their production schedule.

Tom-Cin Metals, a custom fabrications company, was facing major problems with overscheduling, inefficient data entry processes, and inaccurate order handling. The company's old way of doing things was very manual, with employees scanning, picking material, and logging material by hand. This was very labor-intensive. As for data collection and inventory, there was a tendency to think that the material was ordered, only to find out later that the order wasn’t placed. This resulted in waiting for the material to come in. Another common challenge was the inability for customer service or the production manager to efficiently manage order entry or respond to an order status call from trading partners and customers. These tasks could easily consume hours and even days of lost productivity.

Sanmina, a tier one contract manufacturer, was facing challenges with its existing on-premise Manufacturing Execution System (MES). The system, although advanced, limited the management's visibility of real-time production metrics in each factory and required significant maintenance from operations and IT teams. The company manufactures 250 million products per year for 700 different OEM customers, with over 200,000 different top-level assemblies produced each year. The OEMs operate in diverse industries including telecommunications, enterprise computing & storage, industrial and clean technology. A significant amount of production is for medical, aerospace and automotive products with strict regulatory requirements. The existing on-premise MES was not well suited for factory automation and other IIoT initiatives.

A major clean energy OEM was in need of a new Manufacturing Execution System (MES) that could handle two very different types of production and provide visibility across multiple manufacturing facilities. Their product is a complex industrial system with critical subassemblies produced using advanced chemistry and processing. With a new factory opening in a matter of weeks, their existing MES system was not adequate. The older system would not be able to scale to meet their new product manufacturing challenges. These challenges included the flexibility to handle product lines that are both high volume/low mix and low volume/high complexity, traceability of chemical modules produced in one facility and integrated into systems in another facility, variability and ease of use in the user interface to adapt to different manufacturing and operator setups, and providing complete visibility across several plants around the world.

A global medical device manufacturer had been producing complex Class II medical devices for years, using 42Q as their MES. Now they faced the challenge of manufacturing high volume Class III medical devices with complex, fully automated production lines. They feared that implementing advanced, high volume automation using 42Q MES would require significant factory downtime. The new production lines required a high level of sophisticated automation and a manufacturing execution system that supported and seamlessly integrated with such systems. The operational requirements included: Plans for volumes of 10 million devices per year, which required highspeed lines running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Manufacturing operations for a product that includes small components with dimensional tolerances of just a few microns (10-6 meter) in size. Handling these components manually and placing them in subassemblies with repeated precision required highly specialized robotic equipment. The stringent requirements of ISO 13485 and FDA regulations demands the repeatability automation provides with an MES that can handle high speed transactions. This device must be manufactured in a clean-room environment; automation reduces the number of people needed in the room. Thus, leading to less contamination. The system must automate backflush via connection to an Oracle-based inventory management system.

The industrial systems company was facing a challenge of implementing a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) across multiple plants. The company's product was complex, involving intricate subassemblies that required advanced processing at multiple plant locations. The company needed a flexible, easy-to-install MES that would enhance visibility across plants. The operations team began the evaluation process by reviewing on-premise solutions but excluded them based on high implementation costs, substantial recurring costs for maintenance, and high levels of expenditure and risk.

Cirtronics Corporation, a product manufacturer operating within multiple markets, was using MAX ERP and Aegis software as a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) to automate their manufacturing floor. However, they faced a challenge in streamlining the process of validating part numbers between Aegis and MAX—a process that could take most of a day when customers sent a new or revised bill of materials. The challenge was to create a seamless integration between MAX and Aegis so that information flowed quickly and smoothly between the two systems. If integration could be built, Cirtronics would be able to take full advantage of the best capabilities of each system.

Connor Solutions, one of the UK’s largest privately owned EMS providers, was facing increasing demands for compliance, control, and traceability in the Medical and Avionics sectors of electronics manufacturing. The company was relying on multiple systems to manage data integrity, which was becoming unsustainable due to the associated costs for increasingly complex operational management. The company decided to move towards a single holistic MES solution that would provide a single source of actionable live data, enabling them to achieve the next level of factory control, automation, visibility, and operational excellence.

Lear Shanghai, a subsidiary of the global Lear Corporation, was looking to eliminate rework and shorten new product introduction (NPI) time to improve their overall manufacturing process. As a supplier of automotive electrical distribution systems, their customers’ expectations for product quality and traceability were a key priority. The manufacturing process is quite complex, and the company’s main products include central control boxes, tire pressure monitoring systems, remote keyless entry units, and door sensor systems. Decision makers at the management level must balance their customers’ needs for product quality, on-time delivery, and traceability while minimizing their own production costs and increasing throughput. In 2008, as a new facility, it was crucial that decision makers choose an MES software that could be quickly and easily deployed throughout the facility to minimize the time it took to run as a fully functioning operation.