The Company
NSW, LLC has been operating in Roanoke for almost 20 years. The company manufactures plastic mesh bags for supermarket and industrial applications. In addition, NSW provides design services and plastic media for wastewater and cooling tower industries. Approximately 100 workers are employed at this location.

The Situation
NSW had grown in size to a point that they were unable to effectively provide the sales and customer service departments with accurate lead times. The problem was compounded by an inventory system that was generally inaccurate. NSW’s president approached James Tate, VPMEP project manager, to assist in their efforts to improve customer service, reduce delivery lead-time, and improve the utilization of production resources. Any solutions would involve changes to the company’s accounting and manufacturing information system, which operates from a central computer system.

The Response
VPMEP proposed development of a Master Production Scheduling (MPS) system to gather and display the appropriate information for management decisions and control. This system would coordinate the information on customer demand with the production capacity to make these products. The system information had to be timely and accurate. Integral to the success of the MPS system was the elimination of delays in entering inventory and production transactions. The project began with a review of the current methods for accepting and processing customer orders. The path order from the customer service department to shipment was traced and recorded in a flow chart. Analysis revealed that the slow input of inventory and production data was causing serious issues with information validity. The information displayed by the current computer system was out-of-date and inaccurate, therefore making it unreliable. Staff resorted to informal, time-consuming, and often contradictory information channels to make decisions. It was recommended that data entry activities for inventory transactions and production activities be transferred from the accounting department to warehouse and production personnel. This adjustment would speed up data entry and allow the computer records to reflect more accurately the actual movement of materials. By improving the timeliness of the inventory record data, customer service and sales personnel would then come to rely on the new computer records in lieu of old recording procedures. As a result of this study, ten recommendations were formulated to improve the order entry/production scheduling process. The implementation sequence of these recommendations was established in a presentation to management.

The Results
The company is experiencing faster, more accurate input of customer orders; better response to customer inquiries; improved utilization of production resources; and reduced delivery lead-time. In addition, the enhanced visibility and accuracy of information afforded by the system is giving senior management the ability to identify critical situations far enough in advance to implement economical remedies. Cash flow and resource utilization visibility also enables management to deploy resources to the best advantage.

Management’s Comment
"We’re convinced that the true goal of VPMEP is to benefit manufacturers."
- Larry Ptaschek, President

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