Simplex: Helping On-Time Delivery from Start to Finish
For such a simple tool, there are very powerful benefits that come with Simplex Schedule. All of which are aimed to improve the flow of product through your company, and improve your on-time delivery with your customers.
Lets start out looking at how it helps improve the flow in your company. Typically, tracking all of the jobs in a shop is one of the most hectic, time taxing tasks that has to be done. You have to track every job, keep everyone busy working on the correct job, and make sure that every piece get's complete on time through every step of the process. Just scheduling like that is a full-time job all on it's own. We have taken a big step towards simplifying this task by providing you with only the information you need on 2 simple screens. The first screen is the view of an individual work centers schedule.
This simple view provides you with all the information you need to know to be able to make the right decision on a moments notice. You can see an estimated completion for the entire job including post processes, as well as the estimated start and finish for just the work center itself. And using the built in navigation, you can run various scenarios within seconds to see what the effects of rearranging the jobs would be. This will save you massive amounts of time deciding what to run next and practically remove the guesswork of what job should run next.
The second view is the project view. The project view is an overall look at all the jobs currently scheduled across your work centers. This way, you are able to view every part of a project on one screen. Now you can see exactly what jobs are lagging, holding a project back or even what jobs are much further ahead than the rest and can be held off so you run it all at once. And every part of this view is sort-able, so you can put a focus on what matters to you first. With everything in one place, and all the necessary information, you will always be able to run your projects together so you don't end up running one part and have that effort waiting for the remainder to catch up. This will help you steady your revenue flow by batching not just like-parts better, but by batching projects according to their expected completion times.
The last thing I want to cover in this post, is how this program can improve your on-time delivery from the very front end of your processes, quoting. When a customer sends you a request for quote, one of the first things they want to know is when can they expect their parts. Typically, that involves tracking down a manager and having a discussions over how things are moving right now and then putting together an off-the-hip timeline of when you can expect those parts complete. This is more often than not an optimistic timeline for complex parts or a conservative timeline for simple parts. Either way, it's not near accurate enough to be able to consistently hit an on-time delivery goal.
With the way Simplex projects it's completion dates, your quoting department can directly view the most up-to-date schedule and base the completion date given to the customer off actual data. This means first and foremost, your getting an accurate date to your customer, taking some of the guesswork out of quoting. This will very easily begin to improve your on-time delivery from the very start of your process. The second benefit, is with this quick and simple view of the schedule from quoting, you will be able to put out quotes quicker, and no more having to find a manager to give you an overview of the company just to get a completion date. Simplex lets you give real estimates based on actual data, the moment a customer calls you for a quote.
Want to know more? Look us up at www.nxmfg.com or contact us at [email protected] with your questions today!
*Simplex is currently going through beta testing before final release. Images used in this post may change with the final release of Simplex. If you would like to join our beta test program at a significantly discounted price, please contact us at the e-mail listed above.