Five thousand trucks roll off the line at Knapheide Flint each year. Service truck bodies, dump bodies, snow plows, platforms, premium dry freight vans, lift gates, van interiors, and crane bodies. Up to twenty jobs run concurrently at any time in the production scheduling department.
When Dick Marx joined Knapheide Flint as Materials Manager, he was surprised to find that the company still relied on an enormous magnetic board to schedule jobs. In his mind, manufacturers wouldn’t expect their engineers to design with a pencil or ruler; why make planners/schedulers use a white board or spreadsheets?
The manual scheduling process was labor intensive, required two full-time workers. Worse yet, that board loomed over production as the singular bottleneck on the company’s manufacturing line.
“Our scheduling system was limiting our production capabilities,” says Marx, “It had become the determinant of growth potential, not capacity.”
Every day staff scanned hundreds of board jobs, valiantly trying to make adjustments and predictions. “Customers want to know when their truck will be ready, and we weren’t able to give them a very accurate answer,” recalls Marx. Marx came from a computer background and knew Knapheide’s process could be automated. He set out to find a solution.
An Internet search led Marx to PlanetTogether, a Microsoft .NET based, multi-plant, real-time Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) software developer for manufacturers. “The fact that their product was .NET-based was important. It meant we could easily integrate with our manufacturing software,” Marx notes.
“I saw a demonstration, spoke with consultants, and was convinced PlanetTogether was the solution for us.”
