CHALLENGE

Manual Scheduling System Limits Options

RMC sought an online project management software that would allow the company’s delivery team to better schedule, track and manage hundreds of orders across dozens of machines. The planning, scheduling, and production process was not transparent to the many users. As result, they didn’t have a true, full picture of where particular orders were or what the critical issues were to drive throughput and customer satisfaction.

This presented challenges for the team including:

• Limited visibility into analytics and data – difficult to assess the situation of a particular order
• Could not identify bottlenecks early
• Capacity shortages and excesses were hard to see
• Customers had no visibility of the status of their orders
• Lack of collaboration on orders and projects
• Difficulty integrating rush work into production work streams
• Could not give reliable delivery dates
• Dealing with changes from customers; seeing the implications on other work was impossible
• Only one person had visibility into the entire process

Why VISUM

Visual Solution that could be shared across multiple platforms and locations

Automatic calculation of delivery process measurements

Delivery date promising capability

Simple work prioritization for all work in the system

Flexibility and control

Ability to customize workflows without IT skills

Easy-to-learn and use online project management software that ensured good adoption and widespread usability

SOLUTION

Create a visualization of the entire workflow and add collaboration routines.

Use VISUM to drive team collaboration with a focus on increasing speed and productivity.

Coordinate Communications and Collaboration

VISUM became the lever to rethink their process. They reduced the steps of the production planning process while including more team members. VISUM made it easier to transition to a team-based way of working, simplifying the work to coordinate the changing priorities on the team’s 50+ projects.
Meeting weekly for about 15 minutes, the team to quickly and systematically identified and fixed workflow blockages. There was a noticeable improvement in effective communication and rapid resolution of project issues.

Bring Clarity to Objectives

VISUM created a shared view of all the work in process, enabling a unified approach to keeping the shop producing the right work to satisfy the changing needs of their customers. The metrics, automatically produced by VISUM, supported common goals and alignment across multiple levels of the organization, their leadership was able to align its teams’ efforts with strategic goals and focus its efforts to improve performance.

Use the System to Drive Improvements

The performance metrics provided invaluable insight into the overall process, providing actionable, targeted information on where to improve overall performance. For example, they saw that over time, the number one cause for internal delays was customer approvals. Armed with this knowledge, they stopped finger pointing and begin constructive collaboration with the customer to find workable solutions.