Wingland Foods, part of the Geest Group, is a specialist producer of packed leafy salad products mainly for the Waitrose supermarket chain. The company, based in Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire, sources produce from various leafy salad providers in the UK and the Continent.

Its Sutton Bridge facility was first established back in April of 2000. With a wide variety of orders arriving each day, and with an increasing number of products having to be processed, Wingland realised the plant needed to utilise the most flexible scheduling software solution from the outset, as part of its overall business process system.

This is how the company came to rely on Preactor International for its complex and time-critical planning and scheduling operations.

At the Wingland site, fresh produce first enters the site at Goods-In. It then moves to the preparation stage, from where it goes through a thorough washing and drying system. After drying, produce is weighed and put into crates. These are then issued to the company's production lines. From here products are assembled, sealed and taken to the collation area where they are packed into despatch crates, and then strapped on to pallets.

Prior to the establishment of this site, many of the other Geest sites had relied on Excel-based software for their planning and scheduling requirements. "It was hard to support a truly beneficial spreadsheet in this way because everyone involved in the scheduling process tended to add their own individuality to the system," explained Richard Thorold, Planning Manager at Wingland Foods. "This could sometimes lead to confusion and a general lack of efficiency.

For instance, there was quite a bit of manual adjustment required on a regular basis. If someone made alterations to information stored in the Bills of Materials (BOM) in the MRP system this data had to be noted in Excel. But because this couldn't occur in an automated fashion much time was wasted in adding the information afresh by hand and trying to follow through links with other systems. It was quite a task making sure these links were robust."

Preactor was then established within the Geest group as a key component within its best-of-breed suite of software tools. "With Preactor APS all the required links were already in place and automated," said Thorold. "This meant that we could concentrate our team on becoming good schedulers who understood their forecasts, rather than providing them with the worry of having to become all-round IT specialists. By using Preactor APS we can now guarantee that our schedulers are working in a uniform manner, while not having to get bogged down in other IT issues.

Preactor APS worked well for us immediately at Wingland, and it has proved itself not only to be highly beneficial but also extremely reliable."

The central IT team at Geest has integrated Preactor within Wingland Foods' Recipe Generation Programme (RGP) software. Wingland Foods uses Preactor APS to output scheduling/production information to the shop floor data systems. "We use Preactor APS not only as a device for storing our existing production, scheduling and planning data, but also as a device for passing relevant information on to other systems," said Thorold.

And Preactor has proved itself useful in other ways. "We also use Preactor APS for conducting 'what-if' scenarios such as peak-day analysis. In addition, we rely on the system for providing manufacturing reports on a daily basis; in particular timing reports, those related to maintaining standards and understanding where we are achieving against standard," explained Thorold.

"Moreover, Preactor APS helps us to define any manufacturing process and schedule it in a way that might be technically and legally required. For example, we might need to highlight a product that includes nuts within the mixture. So, by having a set of prioritised rules already set up in Preactor APS there is a consistent approach to scheduling and a simplified method of training our team. The system also helps us set up our shift patterns and requirements related to hygiene etc."

According to Thorold, another key advantage of Preactor APS is the way it helps solve problems such as secondary constraints. "For example, if we have a number of batches that require a certain amount of container buckets, Preactor APS will inform us when we are due to run out," he said. "It is basic things such as this that make our everyday operations so much more efficient, and avoid so many potential headaches."

Thorold also finds Preactor APS's Gantt charts very user friendly. "The drag and drop function means schedule adjustments can be made very quickly, and this is a great help both for our schedulers and the personnel on the shop floor when planning their day's activities," he said. "The colour coding is very useful. It's probably the best visual tool I've come across in this industry. Also, Preactor allows us to forward and back schedule. Again, this is extremely useful."

Preactor International's Managing Director, Mike Novels, said of the project. "This installation again highlights the need for visibility from the planner's point of view and the requirement for an easy to use interface that not only encourages planners to make 'what if' experiments but also provides the in-built rules that ensure any changes conform to the legal requirements within this heavily regulated industry."