New planning organization reduces inventories by 18 percent
- BBC (Behr Bircher Cellpack) Technology introduces wayRTS for multi-plant planning
- Adherence to production deadlines has been increased massively
Munich, Villmergen (CH), August 19, 2021: Supported by valantic’s Supply Chain Excellence Team, BBC Cellpack Technology has optimized its logistics and value-creation processes. New, transparent multi-plant planning facilitates the handling of stock transfer orders, optimizes inventories, and increases delivery reliability. The technological basis for this is the waySuite for Sales & Operations Planning with its modules wayRTS (production planning and control in real time) and wayMES (shop floor client of the planning software). A large part of the previous administrative effort is thus eliminated, and a planning picture that is visible and up-to-date for all stakeholders in the process creates transparency and security. With the PowerBI embedded in wayRTS, management also has access to comfortably prepared KPIs at any time.
BBC Cellpack Technology is a part of the BBC Group that specializes in the production of high-precision finished parts made of plastic or metal as individual parts or assemblies. The plastic production is located in the main plant in Villmergen, while machining is primarily done at the second Swiss location in Worben and in Valašské Meziříčí, Czech Republic. The production is state-of-the-art and largely automated but has so far been controlled by a cumbersome planning process with numerous Excel tools, manual data maintenance, and a lot of paper.
In a comprehensive optimization project, wayRTS (Real Time Simulation) was first implemented in the Swiss locations and then also in the Czech Republic. With wayMES, timely feedback from these locations is recorded and provided for planning purposes. Some of the individual planning levels are prepared centrally from the Villmergen location (customer order and master planning with availability tests, scenario planning, and interface to sales) for some planning areas, but there is also some decentralized planning (detailed planning including machine allocation, local optimization, capacity maintenance, feedback from machines). Reports were automated using PowerBi parallel to wayRTS.
Roger Bill, COO, Chief Operating Officer at BBC Cellpack Technology and client project manager, is pleased about the successful project: “Transparency and a database across the boundaries of the individual plants are the basis for efficient planning, with which parts are ultimately produced when they are needed. We have achieved our project goals completely in time and on budget – it has been confirmed that valantic is the right partner and waySuite is the right software for this.”
“This project was extremely smooth and efficient. One reason is certainly that Roger Bill had already had experience with wayRTS and comprehensive supply chain excellence projects in previous positions,” explains Katharina Breitenmoser, project manager at valantic. “Things that would otherwise delay projects were prepared in exemplary fashion here. For example, the quality of the master data, which, with the exception of a few corrected delivery times, was already perfectly prepared for planning.” A final optimization was the conversion of the software to Unicode in March 2021, in order to enable correct Czech speech output. “We profited from the first quick wins and the benefits of the new processes were felt very quickly. All backlogs have been processed; inventory has been reduced by 18%. Adherence to production deadlines was increased greatly. Escalations that previously occurred every day are now limited to a few exceptions, and we can see that the satisfaction of people involved in the process has increased massively,” says Roger Bill.
