National Truck Equipment Manufacturer Realizes Six Month Return-On-Investment with PlanetTogether Advanced Planning and Scheduling Solution

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) September 14, 2007 -- PlanetTogether, LLC today announced another example of how it provides advanced planning and scheduling solutions that maximize its customers' return on investment, with the successful deployment of PlanetTogether APS.net at Knapheide Truck Equipment Company of Flint, Michigan. Knapheide Flint turns General Motors, Ford, and Dodge truck chassis into the working utility trucks used by municipalities and contractors across Michigan and throughout the country.

Knapheide Flint builds more than 5,000 trucks each year, and its old method of scheduling projects using a large magnetic board had become too burdensome. The manual scheduling process was labor intensive to maintain, requiring two fulltime people, plus, it had become the bottleneck in the company's production cycle.

"Knapheide Flint was experiencing symptoms common to many busy manufacturers     --     its ability to schedule projects, not its capacity, had become the hold up," said Jim Cerra, president and co-founder of PlanetTogether, LLC.

An Internet search led Dick Marx, materials manager at Knapheide Flint, to PlanetTogether APS.net, a Microsoft .Net based, real-time Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software for manufacturers. "The fact that it was a .Net-based product means we are able to easily integrate it with our manufacturing software," he said. "We import job data and inventory availability to APS.net, and export out the schedule dates to our ERP software."

Knapheide Flint is now able to provide its customers with realistic estimates of when a project will be complete. By scheduling individual operations, such as paint and equipment installation, the company is able to quickly identify where bottlenecks are occurring, and work to address them. The familiar drag-and-drop interface of APS.net makes it easy for staff to use the scheduling tool. Visual feedback, such as late jobs appearing in red, increases its usability.

"The fact that APS.net is easy to learn, easy to use, and integrates with a company's ERP software typically results in a rapid return on investment for our customers, as it did for Knapheide Flint," said Cerra.

"Scheduling used to require two full-time people    --    now it takes about 15 minutes," said Marx. "APS.net paid for itself in six months."

About PlanetTogether LLC:

PlanetTogether is 100 percent focused on providing best-of-breed Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) software to discrete and process manufacturing companies. The result of 14 years of applied experience in production scheduling, APS.net is an easy-to-use tool that handles complex finite scheduling taking equipment, labor, and material constraints into account. It provides accurate scheduled ship dates, what-if analysis, and increased capacity visibility. Using the latest Microsoft .NET framework, APS.net can be easily integrated into existing business processes. Prebuilt integrations are available to the following ERP systems: Sage MAS 500, 200, and 90 ERP, Microsoft Dynamics NV, GP, AX, SAP Business One, and Oracle/JDE. Learn more at www.planettogether.com or by calling (858) 638-7212.

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