We (CERA SYSTEM Verschleißschutz GmbH) are a manufacturer of custom solutions in the valve industry, offering a high degree of vertical integration, very small batch sizes, and a wide variety of product variants. Consequently, we were looking for a solution that would allow production order operations to be flexibly scheduled across multiple machine workstations, display the current order backlog individually at each workstation for the employee, and enable the completion of each task to be confirmed. To avoid duplicate data entry, the order data was to be imported from the ERP system. The ERP system does not offer the necessary functionality—particularly with regard to a user-friendly visualization for employees—and having a system integrator develop this functionality within the ERP system would have been very costly.
Through Mr. Stegemann’s work, a tool was developed over several iterations that was adopted surprisingly quickly and enthusiastically by the employees at the machine workstations. For order management, the days of “chasing parts”—the constant shuffling of parts and order documents and sorting them by urgency and on-site capacity—are over. All of this is now handled in the newly created PC-based tool, and thanks to real-time confirmation of completed work steps, complete transparency has been achieved. The operator looks at his order display and retrieves the corresponding parts that are next in line. They no longer need to ask what to process next and simultaneously receive feedback on whether they are on schedule. They can also combine identical or similar orders from their individual inventory to save setup time.
Overall, the tool has proven to be a game-changer in order management.
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