Boucledor still planning and scheduling in time honoured fashion

The company, which works primarily with precious and noble metals in a precision craft environment, implemented Sage 500 for its main manufacturing ERP, but added Preactor to provide accurate delivery dates and manage capacity constraints. "Preactor is central to our organisation," declares Mathieu Loche, head of planning at Boucledor. "We have important constraints to manage, such as optimising the regulating machines, grouping campaigns or series [and] the traditional aspects of certain operations such as polishing," he continues. "It is impossible for us to manage these elements manually or with a spreadsheet. Preactor generates all the proposed delivery dates and is powerful, reliable and easy to use." It is very important for us to be able to provide reliable delivery dates to our customers as our reputation and credibility are essential assets in keeping us as market leaders." Sacha Dunn, head of IT services at Boucledor, explains: "Thanks to the bi-directional interface between Preactor and Sage, orders are entered in Sage and then sent to Preactor, which optimises our schedules according to our finite capacity constraints. "The plan is typically updated twice a week, and while the Boucledor uses a planning horizon of approximately two months, Preactor can extend this significantly, according to our needs and demands."