You fully control all aspects of the preparation and production processes
COMPANY
Fabryka Urządzeń Kolejowych Sp. z o.o.
The Company supplies railway traction equipment and components for the railway industry. There are tens of thousands of production orders (for finished products and semi-finished products) executed annually by the Company. Steel processing output reaches thousands of tons.
SPECIFICITY
FUK is a market leader in its industry. In recent years, due to rapid development, the Company has completed the construction of a completely new production plant with its own paint shop and optional galvanizing function. Production is divided into two completely different areas. Production of readymade equipment (railway poles) is a typical assembly work, but due to the customer requirements, delivery dates are extremely variable, and often change from day to day. The second area is the production of parts and semi-finished products that are used for further assembly work, but can also be sold as separate products. They are produced as stock products. The Company employs over one hundred people, most of them involved directly with production.
TASK FOR IPOSYSTEM
The IPOsystem was expected to deal with three basic tasks. First, the system had to be able to react immediately to rapidly changing conditions set by customers. The order specifications are updated frequently, which is typical for the railway traction industry. The required delivery times change daily, and so do the quantities in the orders. The system gives the ability to track the progress of order execution in real time and to change the dates and priorities of orders at any time. This immediately results in commands issued to the employees. As a result, they always carry out the most urgent work, and the Company's management can track the progress of the order execution as well as financial status of each order. The second role of the System is the autonomous balancing of needs in terms of minimum stocks for parts and semi-finished products. The Company widely uses the extensive functionality of "self-production" where the System independently, constantly balancing the needs arising from orders and analyzing the available resources and the defined optimal production batch, autonomously, with no human engagement launches orders with the appropriate completion date, priority and quantity. The IPOsystem analyzes data and makes decisions in real time, which result into work orders issued to production department employees. The third key task is to balance purchasing needs and generate constant, current information on the demand, along with the quantity and deadlines. The system has a built-in balancing mechanism, but the advantage of IPOsystem is direct connection with actual data on the production hall, which is of particular importance, given the Company's specificity - frequent variations in priorities and deadlines. The FUK company has been successfully using the IPOsystem for a number of years, and many features currently available in the System had arisen during this implementation.
COMPANY
ICE Group Sp. z o.o.
Manufacturer of solutions for the food industry. It supplies machines and production lines for the industrial production of ice cream.
The Company executes over 100 projects around the world annually.
SPECIFICITY
A common feature of all production orders is their virtually none repeatability. The Company operates in a specialized industry and focuses on a specific group of clients. However, due to changing requirements, seasonality and fashion, virtually every order begins with the so-called blank card. A professional design department of a dozen or so creates dedicated solutions in accordance with the client’s requirements and capabilities. Technologists design production routes, and the task of the production department is to provide the finished machine. Each consists of several hundred to tens of thousands of unique parts as well as many purchased elements and subassemblies (such as control, automation or used more and more often robots).
TASK FOR IPOSYSTEM
The main problem in the production itself, which had been solved by the IPOsystem, was to ensure that each, even the smallest and simplest part had been produced at the right time of the entire, even several-month production cycle. Ensuring delivery dates is also a great challenge for the purchasing department. Production can be characterized as "design and build". The machine or production line is built in stages in the assembly hall, parts are supplied from the machining and warehouse departments. IPOsystem ensures the right date for starting each job. Details’ identification in production halls is particularly important in the company's work. The system precisely indicates the collection point of each detail, which eliminates the time loss associated with finding them. At the same time, hundreds of very similar and yet different details are made for different projects. Their easy identification is ensured by internal logistics control. Management of the project documentation is particularly important for the Company. The built-in documentation flow mechanism allows to identify accurately any attachments and controls their availability to users. The company has been using IPOsystem for several years and has achieved a 25% increase in productivity during this time. An interesting fact is that the data from the system is used for incentive and bonus systems.
COMPANY
Mennica Polska SA
The Company produces circulation coins ordered by the National Bank of Poland and for many national banks around the world. Is a widely known supplier on the global coin market.
The Company also manufactures many collector's, official and investment products.
SPECIFICITY
Although the Company is usually associated with the production of circulation coins, it is only part of its scope of activity (operationally smaller part of the factory in Warsaw). The production of collector coins, often in very low circulation, various shapes and using a wide range of technologies, results in a very diverse Company's production. The factory has most of the production characteristics - from mass production counted in tens of thousands of pieces and made on automated lines, up to unit production, often made manually. The Company offers also medals, decorations, badges (including police badges) and many other products that require special features and special supervision. Enterprise management is supported by a world-class, widely known ERP system, in many areas integrated with IPOsystem.
TASK FOR IPOSYSTEM
Controlling tens of thousands of operations that must be performed to complete production orders on time is the main task of the IPOsystem. The production order involves launching of many subcontracts, and each of them is another package of operations to be performed. At the same time, the departments responsible for sales expect great flexibility, the possibility of changing the deadline or priority, even if the order has already been confirmed. Controlling tens of thousands of changes in the deadlines for each individual order and assigning appropriate tasks to production employees has become a key requirement in implementing the system. The variability combined with the huge number of operations to be performed were key reason for implementing the IPOsystem for production management (launched orders generate on average over one hundred and several tens of thousands of technological operations to be performed). The wide range of operations is also a critical factor. Since many products have a completely individual character, their manufacture often requires special skills of the employee and the use of unusual machine technologies and chemical processing. IPOsystem, thanks to the wide and unique possibilities of defining and saving the technological process in the System and thanks to many functions that allow the actual image of production in the system, enabled the Company to control thousands of changes, options and events. At the same time, the autonomous decision-making mechanism of the System constantly ensures optimal work allocation and continuity of production. Among the System benefits, the Company points out particularly soft elements, such as freeing the management from onerous daily responsibilities related to operational planning and supervising changes. An important aspect is also a greater awareness in the non-production departments of the consequences of too frequent changes in orders, because the System shows such situations on hard, real data.
COMPANY
Promotech Sp. z o.o.
Polish manufacturer of power tools and industrial tools.
The Company carries out tens of thousands of production orders annually, including own projects and subcontracts.
SPECIFICITY
The Company employs ca. 200 people in the production area. The production includes is mainly stationary posts (machining) plus assembly lines. The Company sells globally mainly through distributors, therefore the production department has to synchronize the delivery date of various production orders to one delivery date.
The production is unitary and small-lot, but there are many varieties of finished product (for various local markets).
The main difficulty is to coordinate work on many orders so that, despite their very different workload, all items from the order were finally delivered on the same date. The production cycle for individual products is very different. The number of products in the order ranges from 1 item to several hundred items. In the meantime, semi-finished products are produced, so they can be used in many final products later on. The production itself largely consists of single work stations and one of the requirements is the use of employee multi-tasking.
TASK FOR IPOSYSTEM
The System manages the work of resources to coordinate each individual work for a single order and guarantee delivery of all elements to the assembly department in a timely manner for all client order items. The global delivery date is a priority. Autonomous work, which is a unique feature of the IPOsystem allowed to increase the degree of multitasking of employees and significantly increase their efficiency. Additionally, this feature (autonomy) eliminated delays associated with qualitative defects, because immediately after reporting, the IPOsystem dynamically balances the needs and redirects resources where it is needed at the moment. Thanks to the possibility of immediate and most importantly autonomous reaction to events, the System eliminated the time losses associated with the need for operational planning and work distribution. Further improvement of efficiency was made possible by providing managers with real data on the work of resources and enabling their detailed analysis. In total, direct control of the system and actions taken by Promotech as a result of access to detailed data gave the effect of increasing the plant's productivity by approx. 50%.
COMPANY
SOR-DREW SA
The service company in the metalworking industry, carrying out orders based on the Client’s documentation.
SPECIFICITY
The Company’s production is executed in two separate areas: production of simple wooden packaging, and production of steel structures and metalworking services. IPOsystem manages production in the second business unit (metalworking) where there is greater process complexity, multi-tasking of the employees and frequent variability. Due to the specificity of the service industry, where SOR-DREW is active, the Company has to respond quickly to changing client requirements. The key factor of the company's success is timely execution of orders and the lowest possible cost of production at the same time
TASK FOR IPOSYSTEM
Maximizing the employees’ working time and avoiding any downtimes are crucial from the client’s point of view. In the production process, it is often necessary to perform a relatively simple work, but however, the whole production order may depend on it. The Company uses the IPOsystem functionality to create a multi-level skill matrix for the employee divided into main and supplementary skills, and their level of precision. Thanks to this, employees who would wait for the next work in a standard environment (which would be a waste of time) are redirected to work in other areas. This also ensures the improvement of personal performance of each employees, and as a result the increase of entire factory productivity. The system responds automatically to every variation, and production supervisors’ reaction is basically limited to responding to any disturbances (indicated by the system) and managing the resource availability - simulation mechanisms built into the IPOsystem allow checking the availability of resources in the desired future period and eliminating bottlenecks. A very important benefit that the Company obtained was elimination of quality complaints resulting from inadequate supervision of the production process. The system has functionalities enabling management of the production route in such a way that only operations meeting certain criteria are executed, e.g. varnished components must be properly seasoned before further processing. Due to the large share of export sales, the right quality is particularly important for the Company. IPOsystem ensures that the proper steps in the process are taken, including quality control, and it guarantees the durability of procedures since it eliminates human operational decision making in the production hall.
COMPANY
Valvex S.A.
Manufacturer of sanitary and installation fittings.
The Company executes several thousand orders per month
SPECIFICITY
The Company has full technical infrastructure for the production of fittings, from forging up to machining and assembly. The company has a unique technical knowledge, which allows it to create advanced products and successfully compete on many markets. Production is serial, and in the area of orders it is very variable. The scale of the Company’s development is shown by the increase in employment in the period in which the Company uses IPOsystem - from about 200 at the time of implementation to almost 400 people currently (only in production area!). The Company has an advanced world-class ERP system, which, however, was not able to ensure the proper functioning of the production and order and resource management areas.
TASK FOR IPOSYSTEM
The main task was to properly arrange production orders in the right order and, most of all, to optimally distribute work to employees in the production halls. The shift work and very large differences in the skills of employees resulted in the need to create an extensive management structure directly in the production halls. IPOsystem eliminated direct control of employees by supervisors. The system is resistant to increasing the scale of operations - the doubling of employment did not result in the need to create additional positions in the area of supervision. The system also allowed to redesign the role of some people in the organization and more efficiently use experienced employees so that they do not waste time on simple activities. The bottlenecks were also properly identified, thanks to which investments were redirected to places where there was a real need. The unique features of the system (autonomous decision making) forced the ordering of production technologies and thus the actual value of production costs on individual products was obtained. A significant increase in efficiency was achieved by eliminating unnecessary operational management costs, increasing resource productivity and significantly data quality improvement, which enabled the right decisions to be made in the area of strategic management, particularly regarding investments.
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