Manufacturing journalist Thomas R. Cutler profiled Demand Driven Supply Chain Networks in the current issue of MetalForming Magazine.

According to Jeffrey Ball, Value Engineering and Information Services Manager with Luvata, “This presented a unique challenge for both plants. The two plants had separate planning, inventory, and scheduling systems and in order to ensure that the weld lines at Franklin never ran out of raw material, there was always a large amount of inventory “in the pipeline”. In order to prevent stock outs of a specific part number, a great deal of time was required by both the Buffalo and Franklin Scheduling Teams to avert disaster. It seemed as though, whichever parts were made, they were not the parts that were needed today at Franklin. Expediting of individual part numbers was the norm.”

What Luvata needed was a system that could integrate with both the Buffalo and Franklin Shop Floor Control Systems and provide a visual, easy to understand, and real time representation of the Total Supply Chain.

The Buffalo and Franklin Scheduling Groups went ahead and formed a team to address the need to reduce the amount of working capital tied up in the supply chain and improve delivery reliability. Jeffrey Ball noted, “There was plenty of candid conversation within the team that moved the two plants from a WIN/LOSE mentality, to group focused on developing a WIN/WIN result!”

During a visit to the Franklin plant, it was revealed that Franklin was using a new tool called digital kanban (also known as eKanban) from called Datacraft Solutions, a leading demand driven supply chain technology firm based in Durham, North Carolina. The Luvata team quickly decided that based upon the initial success of the digital kanban system at Franklin, that the Buffalo facility should take advantage of Franklin’s experience with digital kanban. In addition, both plants would now have a common Supply Chain Management Software that could be implemented easily, quickly, and affordably in Buffalo.

Over the next month, the Buffalo/Franklin Team worked closely with the Datacraft Solutions experts, to define the project costs, benefits and time schedule. The primary of objectives of reduced working capital (25% inventory reduction), improved delivery reliability (avoid stock outs), easy to use scheduling modules, and quick implementation time appear to be well within our budget and timeframes. Jeffrey Ball was pleased to report, “The Team is also highly confident that the large amount of time currently devoted to expediting material will be virtually eliminated from their daily routines.”

Datacraft Solutions specializes in providing their clients with the tools they need to rapidly replace outdated manual systems with technology that speeds process flow and improves accuracy. Datacraft’s premier product, Signum has been developed around the Kanban concept of replenishment, and provides an invaluable tool for manufacturing companies to monitor process flow, lower administrative transaction costs, and improve decision-making ability.

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Datacraft Solutions
www.datacraftsolutions.com
Steve Rao
srao@datacraftsolutions.com
800-819-5326