Testimonials

“The system allows us to provide a due date almost as soon as we receive an order enquiry, if later on in a project, problems occur, things can easily be shuffled around.”
Stuart Bateman , Solent Moulds

“The accuracy of current and projected capacity utilisation provided valuable information for production to feedback to the Sales team. For example, production can now identify a specific window when it knows it can comfortably beat the industry average for a certain product, and for how long. On time delivery performance is up from 80% to 95% while machine utilisation has been increased from 75 to 92%.”
Scott Powell , Wall Colmonoy

“Within just a few weeks after going live measurable benefits were achieved. The lead time to assemble final drives for off-roads trucks was reduced from 4 to 3 days without additional hours by better synchronisation of operations. Recently we have used Preactor to decide on a shift change. With the same number of people we have started a second shift which has been able to reduce the lead time further to 2 days, a 50% reduction. In addition Sotreq has heavily reduced overtime, by more than 40%.”
Tulio Santos , Sotreq

“The system has also brought levels of flexibility that were simply impossible before. We now have the ability to run ‘What If’’ scenarios which are invaluable should we have a problem with a delivery or on a production line. We know instantly the impact of an event on the entire plan and from that use Preactor to judge how best to react.”
Patricia Speakman , Ardo

“We would not have survived without Preactor; we are extremely pleased that we chose Preactor and implemented it with CMS when we did. On top of providing individual schedules / work to lists for every process it is also servicing a number of key areas in our business such as the ability to run order inquiries and get back to customers quickly.”
Steve Speakman , Interface Australia

“The benefits of Preactor were immediately noticed, specifically in terms of delivering the much needed visibility that Armstrong required. With the entire current production plan being visible as well as the ability to stretch the future plan out significantly beyond 1 week, Armstrong could identify areas of waste and processes that could be improved. This has directly had led to a reduction in changeover related WIP from 3 days to under 2, a 33% cost saving.”
Jan Longhorn , Armstrong Flooring

“We have been able to minimize our non value-add processes and can accurately monitor and trace our work in process. We have better control of material movements and this has cut inventory levels. Productivity has substantially improved.”
Mr Sachin B L , NTTF

“The benefits were noticeable right away, most noticeably in the area of increased visibility. We can now see all the orders in the system in real time, and how each was progressing. It helped expose the difference between what people thought was required, and what actually was required in order to meet our customer service levels.”
Tony Bestall , Silvergate Plastics

“With Preactor we have got rid of much of the paperwork we had before. Now we have an integrated schedule between the two plants generated using real constraints that we update daily. It allows us to manage everyday alerts, current and future, depending on events in logistic supply chain, as well as the production progress.”
Pablo Vega , EDV Packaging

“We have estimated that the additional ladle per day delivered by Preactor, results in an extra US$ 70 million per year on our annual revenue. In addition with the new system of synchronisation the company has obtained a significant improvement due to faster and better decision making on staff allocation and planned maintenance cycles.”
Rogério Teodoro , Acelor Mittal

“Significant time can be saved by getting a smooth flow of product through each line. As many products have similar packaging requirements, sequencing these correctly minimises the changes to any line which can cut changeover times dramatically. In a similar way, some products do not present a cross contamination risk so it’s important we identify these and factor this in too.”
Alan Robson , NPIL Pharmaceuticals

“Thanks to implementation of Preactor it has become possible to generate real and feasible production schedules, as well as a substantial time reduction in its preparation. It has enabled a reduction in work in process by about 50% and increased on-time deliveries from 40% to 80%, which helped improve Vector’s competitiveness and strengthened its position in the telecommunications services market.”
Leszek Kleinert , Vector

“With better schedule accuracy and control of the machining processes, things became much clearer. In the absence of inventory on the shop floor, visibility was created and the number of missing and damaged items dropped to a handful. Bottleneck processes were easily identified by Preactor and contingencies were discussed months in advance.”
Ian Shufflebotham , Willerby Holiday Homes

“Despite the difficulties in the beginning, like the work to improve our SAP data quality, after only 3 months after the system went live, we have realized just how powerful the solution is. The results achieved in such a time were higher than we expected. The APS solution delivered a significant stock reduction of more then 20% on average across all products.”
Michel Nachbart , Procter & Gamble

“Linked to our ERP Dynamics NAV, the primary objective of reducing tool changes was achieved, and over the first 2 months, was reduced by 20%. This has now extended to a 40-50% reduction which correlates to a rise in production of the same magnitude. To achieve this reduction in tool changeovers, makes Preactor worth every penny in itself. But we have also obtained a number of significant other benefits which add further to the value of our Preactor solution.”
Karl Draper , Foilex

“Ross ERP and Preactor have helped Holland Colours to become a more global company. A lot of our procedures can now be, and are synchronised. Our CTP dates are much more accurate due to better planning and scheduling which has a 2-fold benefit. Firstly, we have greater confidence in the accuracy of dates, which fall into 80% of our customers’ acceptable parameters. This ensures we keep these customers happy.”
Gert Jan Luiten , Holland Colours

“Tight integration is saving more than 10 hours a week. Batch cards are now available at the click of a button as the interface uses the Preactor schedule to automatically release and update orders in Fourth Shift. It also allows the CRM functionality of the Fourth Shift system to instantly make available the end times of jobs to customer services, allowing them to deliver more accurate information to end users.”
Steven Leese , P P Payne

“Preactor has enabled us to push forward with our growth plans, and development of information systems in the factory. We have also been able to schedule our factory for the busiest months in the company’s history, a task which would not have been possible with our old systems.”
Tim Patton , SAM Mouldings

“Before implementing Preactor we used to have piles of stocks everywhere, but that is radically different now. Our on-time delivery performance is now more than 95% and work in process down by 60%. This has translated into real savings of €80,000 per year while an increase in efficiency of 17% means an additional saving of €40,000 per year. Urgent transport costs that were running at €20,000 are now almost a thing of the past. As the total project cost was in the order of €5,000 this means a quite amazing return on their investment.”
Conrado Ginel , Talleres Seicon

“Preactor has helped drive an entire culture change within GRP. We are now making product more efficiently, have one of the best reputations in the business for reliability and on-time delivery, and have in place the necessary forward visibility for strong and sustained growth.”
David Goyder , GRP Structures

“The company is now able to 100% accurate delivery dates to expeditors. Accurate progress reports that drill right down into the progress of each part within a job can be delivered either on request, or pro-actively, all of which provide markedly superior levels of customer service than previously possible.”
John Hulme , Destec

“The biggest advantage is the ability to be able to forecast the load on each machine, and therefore to predict production lead times and have reliable delivery dates. Now it’s easy to answer our customers when deliveries will be made. It saves 70% of the time previously required to do this. This is important because, before Preactor, we spent 35% of our time searching for answers.”
Cristina Assis , Aquacolor

“Preactor gives me the visibility to make accurate delivery promises and meet these in a changing environment.”
Shaun Naidoo , MIS Engineering

“The immediate benefit was that schedulers were elevated from busy work and data management to ‘real production scheduling’. The real payoff was in the 40% reduction of work-in-progress. This is a direct result of the bucketless scheduling available in Preactor, a feature not found in alternative solutions.”
Eric Kapinos , Oberto

“Preactor offers unrivalled functionalities, flexibility and user friendly interface while enabling planning capabilities that can handle very complex scheduling tasks. Imagine the complexity of having to schedule 100 book production cycles to be run simultaneously, each being in one of approximately 60 various fabrication phases, taking into account the number of 30 machines used, with up to 30 people per shift, 24 hour, 6 days a week operation!”
Jerzy Nagórski , Opolgraf

“The combination of increased visibility and control would not have been possible and in today’s highly competitive manufacturing market, that’s what you need to keep your existing customers as repeat order customers, while also attracting new customers from your competitors that don’t have it.”
Dave Poellman , Vesta

“We use Preactor to both make to order and allow us to carry stock on critical lines. As a result of using the Preactor scheduling system our production planning has been reduced from two days a week to half an hour a day. We have also improved next day delivery ability to approx 85% and have also reduced backorders. Before we installed Preactor we were backordering certain items seven or eight times when we were busy. Now it is very unusual to see anything backordered more than twice and when this happens, it is due to a stock error, failed manufacturing plan or failed delivery.”
Cavin Carver , Blake

“Preactor gave us a fast scheduling response allowing the creation of alternative scenarios which has enabled us to control all stages of the production process – from the customer order by date, through choice of production lines, until the release of the product for the customer.”
Antonio Andrucioli , Klabin Industrial Sacks

“Mega’s on-time delivery performance is up from 70% to 100% and the production lead-time reduced by 21%. Considerable reduction in work in progress has been achieved through better visibility of future bottlenecks where we could take action in advance.”
Marcio Schwank , Mega Embalagens

“This allows a much more inventive approach to scheduling. Whereas before the key objective was simply to come up with a schedule in time to be issued to the plant floor, now we can ensure we are generating the best possible schedule.”
Jan Longhorn , Armstrong World Industries

“The true value of this system is not in any individual component, but in the complete integration of all systems and processes. The discipline created in the Preactor implementation, eliminates waste, and provides headlights into problems before they effect results. Preactor has assisted us in moving to the next level of our business growth cycle.”
Carl Heller , Cleaveland-Price

“We did a thorough research about the company and their product capabilities. We also spoke to couple of Preactor users before we finally narrowed down to Preactor. A Preactor team from their Bangalore office visited our Wai plant and spent three days understanding the requirements ending up with a prototype. being demonstrated to our team on the final day. This gave us confidence in the flexibility and strength Preactor and the Preactor team.”
Mr. L. R. Chandak , Garware Wall Ropes

“Preactor has enabled a reduction in process of about 50% and increased on-time deliveries from 40% to 80%, which has helped improve Vector LLC’s competitiveness and strengthen its position in the telecommunications services market. The numbers speak for themselves. I cannot imagine getting such results without having implemented Preactor.”
Leszek Kleinert , Vector

“Preactor is having an impact across the entire business. An example of this would be Preactor being able to show us where we might need to invest in a new machine in order to capitalise on a run of a particular type of product. Since Preactor went live it has directly contributed to the decision to successfully invest in 3 different machine centres which in turn has contributed to a significant increase in sales.”
Rhodri John , Wall Colmonoy

“Not only did we now have the means to easily view what was happening at any point in the business and across the entire plan, the information itself was much more accurate. This meant that the production people saw benefits right away because they now had planning information they knew they could trust.”
Daniel Muir , Highland Spring

“As our planning became more and more difficult to handle manually we were looking for a software solution. We came across Preactor and because they have been into providing Planning and scheduling solutions for many years, we felt that they have good understanding and that’s the reason we decided to go with them.”
Anusha Amaratunga , DSI, Sri Lanka

“The information flow about our orders has significantly improved; It is now accessible at all times to those who need it. Planning is now much more structured and greater efforts are being made to meet customers’ deadlines. PREACTOR has assisted us well in managing our production constraints and conflicts related to equipment capabilities required for production.”
David Pouliot , Plastique Micron

“Preactor has provided us a tool to work quickly with the capacities of individual resources and also enables us to detect deficiencies in the input data, mainly in the technological procedures and design bills of material.”
Petr Vild , Sklostroj Turnov CZ

“We now have to juggle much more detail than we ever had to – smaller orders and with quicker lead times. It’s more vital than ever to know exactly what is happening and when and not rely on approximations. We simply could not have done this before we had Preactor – it’s at the very heart of our production planning and scheduling.”
Mike Evans , TRP

“PREACTOR has a high strategic importance in MEDABIL, combining the company’s expertise in the market of building systems with a supply chain that’s increasingly lean, and also sustaining the exponential growth of the company in recent years through an optimized planning solution.”
Edevaldo de Souza , Medabil

“Preactor is part of a larger context than the mere planning of production in Flantech. The system is part of the strategic objectives for a sustainable growth of our company, and to seek recognition from the market because of our operational excellence. We recommend Preactor to any company that requires intelligent coordination of production processes, regardless of their size or line of activity.”
Vicente Fadanelli , Flantech

“In providing services for cutting, machining and heat treatment, Cortiaço has a high diversity and variability of parts in the production process. We are always looking for new technologies and management tools to exceed our customers’ expectations, and Preactor has provided that. We have experience real results with this solution, benefiting our organization and especially our customers.”
Alex Kämmerer , Cortiaço

“When we initiated the project with ACCERA, we knew that our biggest challenge would be to shape a tool within our production system and also to address so many features. This was only possible thanks to the speed, expertise in production engineering, and, primarily, the professionalism of ACCER’s team.”
Ernani Toso , Grendene

“When I joined the company, our On Time and In Full delivery rate was 42%, last week it was over 90%. Moreover, we now have complete confidence to give a customer an accurate delivery date and should there be an unforeseen problem, for example a machine breakdown or another issue out of our hands, we can go back and update them right away with an accurate revised date.”
Richard Lyon , Global EPP

“Preactor has given us visibility and helped us gain trust and credibility. Preactor has enabled the business to be more integrated and we can confidently make promises and meet them. We pride ourselves on our ability to keep our promises.”
Ian Hodgson , Mode Lighting

“With PREACTOR, we anticipate problems and we act quickly, optimizing our production planning in order to meet the complexities of our demand, which is characterized by high mix and small batches. Furthermore, we highlight the power of ACCERA’s team in the modeling and deployment of the software.”
Augusto Berdette , Digicon

“Today, Preactor is an indispensable tool to ensure the maximization of the use of resources and optimization of Teikon processes.”
Graziela Aragones , Teikon

“A major plus with the system implemented at EXAL is the confidence we have in the different planning scenarios, we now can look at all our alternatives given bookings and line conditions, and can act with certainty that the solution suggested by Preactor will be realized on the production floor.”
Brian Porterfield , EXAL Corporation

“It took approximately 6 months for people in the company outside of himself to begin seeing the benefits of the system. As I used Preactor every day I immediately knew the difference it was making but the reality was that people were so cynical due to the inefficiency of the old system , they would blame Preactor for anything that went wrong – even when it was abundantly clear it had nothing to do with Preactor. However over this time, Preactor consistently kept delivering reliable and accurate plans which made it possible to identify the true nature of where many of our problems were actually coming from.”
Alan Roden , Preformtools

“We’ve come a long way from where we spent 90% of our time fire fighting to where we now spend 90% of our time on fire prevention. Preactor gives the full visibility of potential problems as well as the solution to these problems.”
Alan Roden , Preformtools

“We have grown from a £20m company to a £70m company, doubling the number of our converting machines and handling more SKUS with much, much larger jobs while reducing our Planning department from 12 to 5. People used to have to manually collate all the work sheets from the production floor and manually update the plan which would take in excess of 2 hours each time this needed to be done. Not only does this now just take 2 clicks of a mouse button, because the information is all stored within the system, it is also always accurate.”
Mike Harris , International Greetings

“When the solution was presented we got very excited because we did not believe there would be software that could handle our needs considering the complexity of our business. Preactor gave us the possibility to control and manage effectively the production and people.”
Sueli Gonçalves , Britanite

“It would have been much more difficult to implement Lean without Preactor not just because of the time Preactor freed up but because we can use it to look at ways of improving our overall planning and scheduling efficiency. With the old system, if a customer rang on Wednesday wanting information on an order, we’d have to wait until the following Monday to update the plan. Now we can give the information immediately.”
Alison Walmsley , IPL

“Thanks to PREACTOR we have been able to implement ‘pull’ and not ‘push’ manufacturing. With 20 aircraft types the level of complexity involved was too much to do in the head or use Excel. Also we wanted to formalize our scheduling solution and not rely on the expertise of a single person.”
Francis BONLIEU , Eurocopter

“A major plus with the system implemented at EXAL is the confidence we have in the different planning scenarios. We now can look at all our alternatives given bookings and line conditions, and can act with certainty that the solution suggested by Preactor will be realized on the production floor.”
Brian Porterfield , EXAL

“We cannot imagine any more how to we could manage scheduling without Preactor. OK, it is possible, but the agility we have today is a key factor because every day we are pressed by our customer for short lead-times and high quality. Now we know in advance where there are possible delays and we can change the total schedule and evaluate the consequences. In extreme cases we need to tell customer we cannot meet the delivery date, but we do so several days before.”
Mr. Murilo Olenik , Artis Matriz

“It was possible to reduce the time it took to create a schedule from 7 days to just one day.”
José Luiz Rodrigues da Luz , Brasfrigo

“Using Preactor it is possible to have a fast overview of the factory utilization and a quick answer to the question of achievable delivery dates of customer orders. The ROI was obtained in 1 year after the stabilization of the system and now I feel we can improve the usage of the Preactor even more and further increase the actual results we have achieved.”
Laércio (Lesso) Stange Warmeling , Flexoprint

“No one person alone can mentally track and manage the progress of 10,000 operations on the plant floor. Now, as soon as a problem or any variance occurs, we can see it immediately and take whatever steps are required to ensure that we get the order back on track so all components required to complete any given order become available on time.”
Paul Mittendorff , Hoerbiger

“Every day we discover something new about Preactor that helps us. Without a tool like Preactor I simply wouldn’t be able to function in my role as Director of Inventory. And inventory is the single biggest investment our company makes – it really is that invaluable.”
Patrick Hoffmann , Samuel Strapping

“Searching for the right tool to complement our ERP, we found that with PREACTOR we had the agility and information reliability, and with ACCERA a partner with know-how and initiative to understand and implement our requirements.”
Marcelo Braun , BINS

“Now we can see and balance our entire workload at the press of a button. More than that, we can check at any time how we are doing in reality against our projected plan and to make informed decisions on the basis of this. And, if we do move jobs around, unlike before with spreadsheets, we can see the implication of any decision and how it affects the entire business before the decision is made. This allows us to explore different responses and then make the best ones according to our particular requirements at that time.”
Mike Hutchings , Playdale

“Preactor has enabled a reduction of about 30% in the workload of the team PCP” and today we no longer use spreadsheets for sequencing of production. The advanced planning and scheduling generated by Preactor for the plastic injection area allowed to have a better control and timing in the production process. This led to less material handling at the plant and reduced unnecessary production, providing a 20% reduction of materials in process inventory. Today I set deadlines and meet them with greater precision. There was a 40% improvement in our service delivery, especially in the injected plastic area.”
Marta Remor , Plaxmetal

“Preactor enabled us to better understand our factory and simulate strategic scenarios very quickly. This learning is very important in business decisions and the results achieved by this project prove its effectiveness.”
Eduardo Lazzarotto , Susin Francescutti

“After considering others APS Systems on the market, we chose Preactor because it was the only one that met our needs. We reduced inventory by more than 30% and delivery delays by 63%.”
Vinícius Poletto , Tabone

“Without Preactor we would not be able to create schedules so fast and of such a good quality.”
Gary Qian , Twining

“The increased accuracy and flexibility of the system means that we can safely manufacture certain products in house that we previously would have had to buy in. In fact, there are some components Tex no longer even keeps. In terms of overall stock levels, we estimate that Preactor has helped reduced this by 30-40% with labour costs within the planning department having been reduced by an even more impressive 50%.”
Guy Sentance , Tex Plastics

“Consulting with a practical approach and the flexibility to adapt to the DNA of UNICASA were the main reasons for choosing ACCERA and PREACTOR. After the stage of pre-project, we knew that the business and technical requirements were validated, ensuring that the proposed results would be fully achieved, which effectively we can prove with the excellent results.”
Giancarlo Fontoura da Silva , Unicasa

“This year we intend to expand production with a new Volkswagen project which is currently under development and its particular components are already being tested. However, with Preactor we are sure that the project increase will not entail any unforeseen situations in production planning.”
Marian Szabo , Tower Automotive

“Preactor enables us to achieve the full benefits coming from our work in transforming our production process towards Lean Production. Not only flexibility and visibility but also optimized usage of our resources .”
Giuseppe Baldeschi , Vortice

“Our continuous improvement project is still ongoing. We continue to expand our tools to increase efficiency. We have implemented a simple but complex modeling, documented in detail with the IT Management, for simple control. In the end, the project was longer than expected, it took time … but finally what a result!”
Sébastien Barrot , Lectra

“With the sequencing of the production plan in Preactor, materials planning has also been optimized. Now the materials supply is equalized during the month following the orders production date. Moreover, the tool allows the analysis of a longer horizon of planning in a shorter time, supporting the decision making.”
Marina Vieira , Boticário

“I can recommend PREACTOR without fear for any discrete manufacture company, because even in our factory where we have a mix of Make to Order, Make to Stock, and kanban, and we were still able to have a successful implementation.”
Reinaldo Nakano , Furukawa

“Preactor has brought unknown levels of visibility to Aunt Bessie’s. Even at a business level, Preactor is starting to bring the Planning and Operations functions together and as each sees the impact of decisions by the other, it is telling us more than ever how best to run our lines and in turn, our business.”
Chris Buckle , Aunt Bessie’s