Camfil Farr has been using MAC-PAC XE Priority Manager to support its Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing environment at the company's Crystal Lake , Illinois filter manufacturing plant since December, 2003. A long time MAC-PAC user, Camfil Farr has already improved on-time delivery performance and reduced inventory using Priority Manager, and is now considering extending implementation to at least two more facilities over the coming months. Based on the award-winning OTTO ('On-Time Orders') software product developed by Systems Plus Inc., Priority Manager is designed to support the principles of Rapid Priority Management (RPM). RPM is an emerging approach to manufacturing execution that analyzes and organizes supply/demand information already existing in systems such as MAC-PAC XE to clearly identify the near-term actions operations managers need to take in order to ship orders on time, reduce expediting activity, and minimize inventory levels. Priority Manager brings these capabilities to users of MAC-PAC XE. In addition to Camfill Farr , Priority Manager is now being used by Link-Belt, Gilbarco Veeder-Root, Cooper B-Line, and Cincinnati Incorporated.

It all started at Perspectives 2003 - last year's MAC-PAC XE user conference - where Mike Danford, Camfil Farr Corporate IT and Materials Manager, first learned about Priority Manager. "Several of my colleagues and myself just happened to sit at a lunch table with Systems Plus's Roy Luce and a couple TDCI people," states Danford. "Someone mentioned that the software that makes up the foundation of Priority Manager had recently won the APICS Innovation Award. We asked what was so 'innovative' about it, and by the end of the conversation it was apparent we needed to take a close look at it as a potential tool to help us meet our inventory reduction and delivery performance goals."

That was in August. After further investigation, Danford arranged to have a presentation and demonstration of Priority Manager using Camfil Farr's data at a symposium for Camfil Farr's materials managers held in November. Subsequently the software was installed at Crystal Lake in December and immediately became an integral part of the daily production control process there.

At Crystal Lake , Priority Manager is used primarily to support the plant's demand-driven JIT production environment in conjunction with MAC-PAC XE 's JIT module. Each day, at a brief morning meeting, Priority Manager is used to see if there are any material supply problems created by new customer orders entered the previous day. Identified issues are then worked immediately by purchasing and/or production control. Priority Manager is also used each day to drive an updated JIT schedule based completely on actual customer demand. Previously, JIT schedules could only be produced twice a week, and they were based in part on forecasted demand.

Using Priority Manager capabilities, Crystal Lake has improved their on-time delivery performance by several points - they now regularly ship 95% of their orders on time. Their objective is to achieve an industry leading 98+% service level prior to year end while shortening production time significantly. It is expected Priority Manager's ability to create production schedules by work centers on a daily, or even hourly basis, will play a major role in both the delivery performance improvement and the production lead time reduction.

One of the Priority Manager champions at Crystal Lake has been that plant's local Production Control Manager, Chris Sanders. "Life is a lot easier now that we have Priority Manager," states Sanders enthusiastically. "I would hate to go back to the days when we had to work without it. The data it uses has always been there in MAC-PAC, but now we see it in ways that instantly tell us were to put our efforts in order to get the right product out the door at the right time."

Danford summarizes by saying: "Priority Manager is helping us get even more value from MAC-PAC. We now see it as one of the most important tools we have for maximizing delivery performance while keeping inventories low. It's a great asset to our JIT program."

Camfil Farr is the world's largest manufacturer of filters and clean air solutions, with annual sales of approximately 300 million dollars. Camfil Farr products are used everywhere from offices, to clean rooms for sensitive electronics production, to mines, factories, hospitals and nuclear power stations.