Better Shop Floor Planning and Scheduling With Preactor Partner

When it comes to reaping rewards on the shop floor, manufacturers would be wise to give "careful thought to planning and scheduling. A real-time data collection system, in partnership with Preactor, can provide job tracking and better factory floor control. How so?

On Windows recently sat down with Preactor International's president and CEO to get his take on "the company, which focuses entirely on the creation of innovative tools to help organisations plan and schedule their demand against the finite capacity of plants or businesses, and its work in the manufacturing industry."

When it comes to optimizing planning and scheduling on the factory floor, here's what the Preactor executive had to offer: "The Preactor family of products is aimed to help small, medium-sized and multinational businesses achieve [better efficiency so they can reduce costs and improve customer service levels].

Such integrated software includes real-time data collection systems that utilized touch-screen capabilities. Such a lean paperless manufacturing execution system (MES) provides WIP tracking, job tracking and factory floor control. It also includes modules for labor collection, job sequencing, machine integration and greater visibility to jobs on the floor via an easy-to-install and intuitive push-button touch-screen user interface." By partnering with Preactor, such a system provides overall more streamlined scheduling and planning on the shop floor.

A Preactor alliance takes visibility, tracking and control capabilities on the factory floor to a whole new level. In a day and age when factories are closing their doors left and right, such abilities may spell the difference between staying afloat and declaring bankruptcy.

And how exactly is this recession impacting Preactor? So far, the company has not seen any slowdown. "In fact we had our best ever year in 2008. Companies tell us that they don't want to commit at the moment to 'big bang' projects. They want smaller projects that attack specific pain points. Predictions from analysts suggest that shop floor operational software products like ours, which help companies both to become more agile in process execution and to respond effectively to a more unpredictable demand, will have the highest growth in the next five years," asserted the president and CEO.

One software product that fills the bill is a system that enables manufacturers to compete on speed rather than cost and that delivers real-time, continuous improvement for greater profitability and faster delivery to customers. In an era where increased production, and in turn increased sales, is vital to a manufacturer's survival, speed is essential.

A Preactor-partnered real-time data collection system modifies and adjusts factory work in progress based on actual "real world" production events. The goal of this approach is improved performance and, as a result, increased profits. It's no wonder then that Preactor grew by 20 percent last year, a growth rate the company hopes to maintain even during the current economic downturn.