ROB-EX Dashboard provides transparency and improves collaboration between departments – and across borders

ROB-EX Dashboard has provided Cimbria Manufacturing A/S with tools for capacity scheduling across departments and national borders. ”With labour-intensive production, the company must optimise on all parameters to maintain its competitiveness. This is where the implementation of ROB-EX comes in,” explains Morten Krog, Operations Manager at Cimbria Manufacturing, and he continues:

”With ROB-EX, we have succesfully optimised a lot of things – and we are not even done yet! We have improved process time and optimised setup times on tools, punching machines and laser cutters, and we have reduced the number of setups on our 10 bending machines. We have grouped resources in product families and minimised waste and time spent on non-revenue activities. ROB-EX has proven to be an efficient tool for reaching our goals.”

ROB-EX Dashboard solves capacity challenges in a complex production

Morten Krog continues: ”Over the last year, ROB-EX Dashboard has been pivotal to many new initiatives and improvements. Every Monday, the managing director, the head of operations, planners and the foremen meet to discuss capacity across the entire company. “With ROB-EX Dashboard, we are able to gain a full overview across all our operations. In a single, comprehensive glance, we have a complete overview of our entire capacity in Thisted, Austria and the Czech Republic. If our capacity is under pressure in Thisted, we are able to find solutions together with the other manufacturing companies,” says Morten Krog.

Transparency and collaboration across the organisation – and across national borders

”ROB-EX Dashboard provides transparency. The visual overview ensures that we all have the same data and information in all departments. This has really changed things and provided us with a basis for some great discussions that we found difficult to have earlier. Today, everyone has access to the same data, at the same time, and we are able to obtain a complete overview of capacity and any challenges that may arise,” Morten Krog continues.

Birthe Buus Jørgensen, planner at Cimbria Manufacturing, elaborates: ”With the collecting of capacity data in a single view, each foreman can see the load in his or her respective department, but is also kept aware of the situation in the other departments. This makes it easy and fast for us to see where we can allocate resources, either by asking operators to check in at another location or by taking over production orders from another department. We are currently helping our Czech colleagues with a number of assignments – and this is something that we were simply not able to do before we had ROB-EX Dashboard. Today, it is fully transparent and easy to see the exact number of hours that we can offer, and we are able to change our plan promptly, if the situation changes.”

ROB-EX Dashboard is also a management tool

With ROB-EX Dashboard, management at Cimbria Manufacturing is always in control of the order status, and they know how busy things are in production and the exact areas in which capacity may be under pressure. It makes it much simpler to visualise how capacity and turnover are interconnected, and to maintain the right balance between them. Management and sales are able better equipped to schedule future initiatives, when they know the precise status of operations, both day to day as well as three months ahead.

Management has a visual overview that makes it much easier to report and communicate the company status to all relevant individuals and departments. ”We definitely see a positive result on our bottom line,” concludes Operations Manager, Morten Krog: ”ROB-EX Dashboard gives us competitive advantages, as it strengthens our flexibility and adaptability. ROB-EX alone has meant that we have had an improvement of 3-4 % on efficiency and productivitiy – and there is still more to come..!”

About Cimbria

Cimbria has used ROB-EX production scheduling for approximately 4 years. Scheduling involves about 60,000 production orders/year – distributed on several locations in Denmark and in Europe. Cimbria is primarily involved in MTO (made to order) manufacturing. The company has 850 employees and covers all areas related to production, sales & projects etc. Production facilities are located in Thisted (Denmark), Austria and the Czech Republic. In Thisted, 350 employees work at 3 separate locations.

Cimbria is a leading manufacturer in industrial processing, handling and storage of grain and seeds (both animal feed and for human consumption) and other bulk products. Cimbria specialises in project design, engineeing, process control – and in development, manufacturing and servicing of individual machines, tailored systems and turn-key installations.