Initially starting out as a tube supplier to local and regional customers, Sanborn Tube Sales, Inc. is now a custom manufacturer, distributor, and manufacturer’s representative for tubing, aluminum extrusions and fabricated parts. Since 1957, the Pewaukee, Wisconsin-based firm has been providing supply chain solutions to OEMs and manufacturing companies of all sizes in the agriculture, transportation, recreation, medical, marine, office furniture and heavy equipment industries.
As Sanborn continued to grow the manufacturing side of the business, management realized the time had come to upgrade to a more sophisticated ERP system that could add flexible production scheduling capabilities to the company’s existing supply chain/distribution model. After researching a number of different ERP products, they selected Global Shop Solutions, in large part due to its robust Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
In particular, the finite scheduling feature in APS plays a key role in communicating with customers and completing jobs on time.
The big difference with APS is that it allows us to schedule proactively rather than reactively.
Chad Schultz, Operations Manager at Sanborn Tube Sales, Inc.
“When customers place an order, we need to give them quick answers because of their short lead times,” says Schultz. “They want to know if we can finish the parts to meet their deadline and, if not, what date we can promise them. Finite scheduling shows our capacity by work load and hours so we can give customers a much more accurate estimate of what we can do by when.”
The historical data in APS also helps Sanborn make long-term decisions. For example, if they’re constantly short on capacity, management can consider buying another machine to increase it. Having a constantly updated schedule in APS also lets planners know right away when to schedule overtime to ensure a job gets completed on time.
“The big difference with APS is that it allows us to schedule proactively rather than reactively,” adds Schultz. “That way we can avoid the problem of coming in on Monday morning and realizing we should have worked overtime the previous Saturday.”
To learn more about Sanborn and their use Global Shop Solutions to simplify their manufacturing, download their case study.