"MAPICS (now Infor) Supply Chain Management solution has enabled us to focus on only those items that limit the manufacturing system from meeting customer ship dates. Our on-time delivery performance is now at an all-time high of 98%. By managing fewer items, we are able to achieve better results faster." Ralph Carrell Production Planner Brenco, Inc.

Company Overview
Brenco, based in Petersburg, Virginia, is a manufacturer of tapered roller bearings, reconditioned locomotive journal boxes, and forged and machined transmission rings for the railroad and automotive industries. With at least 50% of the domestic market, Brenco is the leading provider of tapered roller bearings, precision pieces of equipment that are critical components of freight cars.

According to Ralph Carrell, production planner at Brenco, "It’s not just the quality of steel we use, but the unique way in which we manufacture our bearing races, that makes our bearings much more durable."

Brenco uses a metallurgically superior, hot-rolled ring forging process to create the inner and outer raceways of its bearings. Brenco produces bearings of high quality and strength that resist impact damage and fatigue spalling. The quality and strength of Brenco’s products are extremely important today with increasing loading requirements for railcars.

The Situation
While Brenco is a major force in the domestic market for tapered roller bearings, the company is aggressively pursuing market opportunities overseas to drive future growth. To compete in the international market, the company found that it had to introduce new products, further complicating its production process. As international demand for its products grew, inventory costs soared, and on-time delivery performance started slipping. Brenco quickly realized it needed to reduce inventory, improve its schedules, and boost on-time deliveries to meet its new competitive challenges.

"We have a wide variety of products and a complex flow of parts on our shop floor. Demand has its ups and downs, and supply is not always reliable. When demand changes, some of our work centers and people may be under-utilized. This quickly results in the need to expedite at other work centers, creating overtime expenses. As inventories climb, we face a shortage of parts at critical assembly points. All of these problems jeopardize on-time delivery performance," states Carrell.

"Complex manufacturing is so much more than simply getting the bills and routing right," Carrell continued. "How do I get a workcenter to produce its subassemblies on time? What centers are feeding my bottlenecks? Are they really bottlenecks? What do I need to do to achieve a predictable, stable flow of subassemblies and products through my shop to meet customer promise dates?"

The Solution
To streamline its production processes and speed the flow of material through its plant, Brenco began looking for a next-generation constraints-based software solution to help them achieve their desired results.

Carrell noted that, "After an in-depth analysis, we concluded that MAPICS (now Infor) Supply Chain Management could not only handle our volume of data and generate schedules very fast, but that its data requirements were very simple, and it was compatible with our ERP solution." These benefits helped Brenco implement MAPICS (now Infor) quickly and easily.

"It’s extremely important that we have control over the complexity and uncertainty of the flow of materials through our plant," said Carrell. "Until we implemented MAPICS (now Infor) Supply Chain Management, control was beyond our reach."

Optimizing Inventory Levels and Lead Times
By using the MAPICS (now Infor) solution to identify the constraints in its production system, Brenco was able to truly subordinate the schedules of its non-constraints to the requirements of its constraints. MAPICS (now Infor) Supply Chain Management calculated the material requirements needed to support the shop floor and production plan, which resolved contentions at the non-constraints. This not only solved wandering bottlenecks, but also dynamically sized time buffers to optimize Brenco’s inventory levels and lead times.

"With MAPICS (now Infor), the plant just became easier to manage, and we gained immediate and significant quantitative benefits," notes Carrell. "Prior to MAPICS (now Infor), we ran two separate schedules, which threw the factory out of synch. Not only was the plant not synchronized, but work in process (WIP) began to get out of control. The excess WIP tied up cash that could be used to fund other projects. Once we synchronized the manufacturing system using the MAPICS (now Infor) solution, we brought WIP back under control, reducing WIP by 29 percent and increasing WIP turns by 90 percent." In the same timeframe, the company has found that demand for its products has increased by 40 percent.

Real Results
With MAPICS (now Infor) in place, on-time delivery performance increased to 98 percent, and according to Carrell, "What used to take 12 hours to schedule now takes only one hour. We now know almost a day-and-a-half sooner whether or not the non-constraints are affecting customer deliveries."

Today, with the help of MAPICS (now Infor), Brenco concentrates on ensuring that its gating operations do not release more product into the factory than is absolutely necessary to meet customer demand.

Says Carrell, "We stick closely to constraints-based methodology and focus only on those items that prevent the manufacturing system from meeting the customer ship dates. With MAPICS (now Infor) Supply Chain Management, we’ve successfully managed material flow to significantly improve manufacturing performance.