Leveraging Opcenter APS to increase productivity by 10 percent

Helping customers orchestrate the entire supply chain

NEOEP Engenharia de Producao LTDA (NEO) is a consulting company that specializes in production planning and scheduling technology and production engineering. It was founded in 2013 by experienced consultants and has a team of over 20 professionals with a rich history in industrial and computing engineering. NEO’s team also has expertise in supply chain processes and technologies, planning, programming and production control systems. It is headquartered in Porto Alegre, Brazil and has a branch in Portugal. It is currently planning to expand further into Europe and the Americas.

NEO specializes in Opcenter™ Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software, which is part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services. NEO drives meaningful results by incorporating its specialization in Siemens’ software with unique training methods, reliable solutions and support. Its supply chain solutions help customers improve production efficiency and distribution processes with APS, master production scheduling and distribution requirements planning solutions. NEO enables customers to increase productivity and service levels and minimize costs. By using Opcenter APS, NEO can rapidly and accurately simulate production scenarios and define schedules that consider demand, supply and constraints.

Marcel Meyer, sales director at NEO, states, “Our APS solutions are more than just scheduling tools; they help our customers orchestrate the entire supply chain, from purchasing raw materials and tools to informing their customers when the finished goods will be delivered. We integrate processes with the holistic precision of Opcenter APS and the experience of the consultancy.”

Making production scheduling 300 times faster

Dauper, a food product manufacturer located in Canela, Brazil, needed a scheduling and planning system that can balance demand and capacity to generate achievable production schedules. The NEO team identified bottlenecks and executed strategies for meeting their goals such as reducing sequencing time, optimizing line changeover times, establishing visual management of raw material status, generating sales forecast scenarios and creating reports and customized views to support faster decision making.

The solution was released into Dauper’s production environment after about five months of planning and testing. Additionally, NEO saved two to five days per month by using Opcenter APS to replace manual spreadsheet-based schedule creation.

Lucas Peres, supply manager at Dauper, claims, “The excellent support that NEO provided during and after implementation made our lives much easier.”

Increasing productivity by using Opcenter APS

Móveis Bartira is the largest furniture manufacturer in Casas Bahia, Brazil. It was struggling with delivery delays due to manually creating and maintaining spreadsheets for scheduling and day-to-day operations. NEO helped it consolidate processes and evaluate production capacity, labor, raw materials and more by using Opcenter APS production simulation. This enabled Móveis Bartira to reduce the time it takes to schedule and extract data and complete tasks from weeks to hours or minutes. By adopting Opcenter APS and NEO’s consulting expertise, Móveis Bartira increased productivity by 10 percent and adhered to their schedule by 100 percent.

Fernando Canelas, head of production planning and scheduling at Móveis Bartira, states: “Implementing Opcenter APS was a milestone for our company.”

Reducing inventory by nearly 50 percent

Grupo Tigre, a Brazilian plastic materials manufacturer for the construction industry, produces approximately 4,500 products. It needed a customizable production planning and scheduling solution, so it aligned with NEO to improve schedules, reduce work-in-process (WIP), optimize setups and provide dynamic materials analysis. By leveraging the power and flexibility of Opcenter APS, NEO minimized mold changes and balanced resources to facilitate machine uniform loading. It also developed a specific algorithm to automate and generate more accurate plans. Grupo Tigre met 95 percent of deadlines, reduced inventory by 50 percent and automated production order creation in its systems, applications and products (SAP®) enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, which increased scheduling efficiency.