Toyota
Hitachi Metal Inc. manufactures installation parts for gas pipes, sewage systems, water supply systems, fire hoses, and much more. Further, these parts are used in the production of their own air conditioning systems, water pumps, and precision instruments. Research and development constantly works on diversification of materials and processes.
Problems prior to introducing Asprova.
- Long processing times of the mainframe computer cause lengthy conception phases.
- Short-noticed order changes can hardly be handled appropriately or in a timely manner because of this, too, and so constant, manual, and lengthy readjusting is required.
- Lastly, long throughput times make it impossible to meet cutomer requirements.
Advantages of Asprova.
- Asprova features a super-high calculation speed.
- It provides a large array of visualization tools embedded in a user-friendly interface.
- All master data can be managed inside of Asprova, if desired.
Achievements with Asprova.
- Total computation time has been reduced down to three hours.
- Production throughput time has been shortened to one week.
- Changes to the production plan are easy thanks to the high calculation speed.
- Less effort is required for corrections thanks to peripheral support functions.
Hitachi Metal Inc. used to rely on the mainframe computer to schedule production processes, which took up large amounts of time. Additional, manual corrections afterwards made the whole planning process labor intensive. Still, the monthly production schedule is not feasible and results in constant failure to meet customer order deadlines. To solve this problem, implementation of a production scheduling system is investigated.
After a trial phase in research and development, the Asprova production planning system is recommended as the best solution. Flexibility and accuracy of mapped processes and resources, a highly advanced scheduling logic, and user-friendly interface are powerful advantages with which the competition cannot keep up, and thus the decision is made. In reality, it takes less than three hours from planning to issuing work instructions.
Data transfer from the mainframe computer is now done on a weekly basis, instead of a monthly on and changes to the plan can be realized within short amounts of time with Asprova, without becoming a burden. Customer satisfaction has increased greatly thanks to significantly decreased delays from order reception to production. Employess at Hitachi Metal are ale to expand functions in Asprova on their own with the help of technologies such as COM-interfaces, plug ins, or Microsoft Excel.
