Reducing delay peaks from 30 days to less than 10 days and planning and simulating complex scenarios in under 10 minutes

Providing electrical wire and cable solutions to numerous sectors

Induscabos Condutores Elétricos (Induscabos) is one of Brazil’s largest manufacturers of high-, medium- and low-voltage electrical wires and cables. With a broad product portfolio and exports to over 15 countries, the company excels in the energy, oil, gas, mining, steel, agribusiness and construction sectors, among others.

Its manufacturing facility spans approximately 80,000 square meters (m²) in Poá, São Paulo, Brazil, and includes four production units and two state-of-the-art laboratory facilities. As of 2025, it has an average monthly production of 2,600 tons of electrical conductors, totaling approximately 31,000 tons per year.

Needing to solve operational bottlenecks

Induscabos’ transformation journey began with recognizing its planning and programming processes had reached their limit. The inherent complexity of electrical cable manufacturing, coupled with operational bottlenecks, prevented the company from reaching its full potential.

Factory scheduling is a highly complex task, requiring perfect synchronization between multiple operations (drawing, twisting, extrusion, etc.) for over 10,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) across more than 75 production lines. Challenges that manual planning could not effectively address included setup optimization to minimize capacity losses and the physical constraints of storage space for in-process coils.

Without adequate tools, medium- and long-term visibility was limited, hindering strategic decision-making aligned with the sales and operations planning (S&OP) cycle. Thus, the factory’s adherence to schedules was low, leading to chronic delays of over 30 days, impacting customer confidence.

The production order generation process was the biggest operational bottleneck and the main symptom of inefficiency. With a need for 3,000 orders per month, the work cycle was unsustainable. Every 10 days, the company had to generate a new batch of 1,000 orders, this took 10 days of direct manual work by the production planning and scheduling manager (270 hours per month). Essentially, the manager spent all their time performing this single activity, with no capacity to dedicate themself to strategic areas of production management and control.

Faced with this scenario, Induscabos sought a solution that went beyond day-to-day planning. A robust system capable of modeling all factory constraints, optimizing scheduling, simulating scenarios quickly and integrating with the company’s manufacturing execution system (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems was essential. This solution would transform problem complexity into a competitive advantage.

To overcome its challenges, Induscabos sought a partner that offered not only a technological solution but also specialized consulting. The choice fell on NEO Digital Industries (NEO), a Siemens Digital Industries Software expert partner, and leveraging Opcenter™ Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software. Opcenter is part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services.

Integrating Opcenter to turn complexity into advantages

During the first phase, using Opcenter translates the factory’s complexity into a dynamic, visual digital environment. Thus, in a matter of minutes, the system can orchestrate the production flow from wire drawing (the beginning of the production process) to the finished product, minimizing the volume of coils in process and respecting space constraints.

Another essential point of the project was focusing on setups, intelligently decreasing die and color changes, reducing the total setup time and, consequently, the product’s makespan, making better use of manufacturing capacity.

Finally, after registering the appropriate work centers, production constraints, routes and setups, the solution gave the planning and scheduling team the ability to create and analyze multiple planning scenarios in less than 10 minutes, offering a medium- and long-term vision essential for the S&OP cycle and to promise delivery deadlines with greater assertiveness.

After implementing Opcenter, Induscabos began to rely on NEO’s support and continuous improvement services, a key differentiator of the partnership. The NEO team operated actively and purposefully, analyzing Induscabos’ new processes alongside the client’s team.

During ongoing support monitoring, NEO identified a new and important opportunity for improvement in the order generation bottleneck before Induscabos recognized it as a potential automation point. Based on this proactive analysis, NEO proposed developing a proprietary, customized solution to eliminate the bottleneck and unleash the strategic potential of the planning and scheduling team.

Generating production orders was difficult. To ensure the solution’s success, it was crucial to respect the industry’s inherent characteristics and constraints. It required navigating a complex bill-of-materials (BOM), with products containing over 15 levels of semifinished products. At each of these levels, the system needed to intelligently select alternative materials based on user input.

Another crucial point was that the generation engine needed to simultaneously comply with multiple policies, as the company operates as a make-to-stock (MTS) and make-to-order (MTO) company. This includes considering multiple batch policies for semifinished products and minimum stock levels for finished products.

Finally, Induscabos could consider the challenge of minimum batches. Any surplus of semifinished products the company generated to respect the minimum batches should be automatically converted into finished product orders, accounting for current stock balance and what the generator planned during that calculation cycle.

“When searching for a solution in the market, we had a list of requirements,” says Josete Grigorio, information technology (IT) manager at Iduscabos. “Thanks to NEO and by using Opcenter, they not only met all our requirements, but also added new elements that enhanced the project, such as integration with our MES. The consulting and support service that followed is a benchmark of quality for us.”

Enhancing visibility and control to reduce delays

Using Opcenter APS provided the visibility and control necessary to address delivery delays, one of the most critical problems Induscabos faced. The company went from a scenario with delay peaks of over 30 days to no delays exceeding 10 days, ensuring greater reliability and customer satisfaction.

Further, by leveraging production scheduling, the company could plan and simulate complex scenarios in less than 10 minutes. This agility gave Induscabos the confidence to embrace higher value-added projects, resulting in a historic shift in the company’s profile. Previously, it worked exclusively with simple cables; however, now 31 percent of its production is dedicated to highly complex cables that are configure-to-order (CTO) and engineer-to-order (ETO). This enabled the company to reposition itself in the market, moving from a simple product portfolio to competing in a more profitable market, a strategy that would have been impossible with previous methods.

“Before partnering with NEO, we faced delays of up to 30 days,” says Leonardo Galvão, planning and scheduling manager at Induscabos. “Today, that reality has changed dramatically. With Opcenter, we’ve gained control that allows us to keep delays to less than 10 days, even with much more complex production. And with the Order Generator, what previously took our planning and scheduling manager 10 days of intense work is now resolved in 90 minutes. NEO didn’t just give us software; they gave us the tools, like Opcenter, to transform our operation and compete at a new level.”

Using the Order Generator, an add-on for Opcenter that NEO developed, the company reduced time spent on this task by 98 percent. Before the project, Induscabos required approximately 270 hours of intensive work from the planning and scheduling manager to generate the month’s 3,000 orders. With the generator, the company could complete this same volume in 4.5 hours, considering the full generation and review cycle. The solution freed the planning and scheduling manager from a manual and repetitive task. Their time is now dedicated to critical scenario analysis, production optimization and continuous improvement.

The company achieved these gains while the operation’s complexity increased. Even with the growth in the product mix and the entry into CTO/ETO projects, key on-time delivery (OTD) indicators and inventory levels remained stable, demonstrating the implemented solution’s robustness and scalability.

Leveraging expert partnerships to tackle future challenges

The partnership between Induscabos and NEO while leveraging Opcenter APS is proof of how technology, when applied strategically, becomes a catalyst for business transformation. The company not only solved its chronic delay and inefficiency challenges but also used the new planning platform as a lever to reposition itself in the market, embracing complexity and achieving new levels of competitiveness.

“Partnering with NEO and leveraging Opcenter was fundamental in restructuring our planning and scheduling processes,” says Grigorio. “They not only implemented the tools but also helped us manage our workflows and make faster decisions. Their ongoing consulting and support service is a benchmark of quality for us and gives us the confidence to take our next steps.”

With a robust, agile and visual planning foundation, Induscabos now has the necessary foundation to continue its growth and leadership trajectory. The company is more prepared than ever to pursue new challenges and solutions that will enhance its Digital Transformation journey.