Marisio and Co. Ltda. manufactures high quality electrical products for the domestic and office markets.  Based in Santiago City, Chile, the company operates out of a modern facility covering more than 8,000 sq.m.  Here 200 employees, engineers, technicians and production staff, design, develop, manufacture and distribute more than 3,500 products.

Over many years Marisio has built up an enviable reputation for its quality recognised in Chile and around the world.   Having so many parts and assemblies makes the control of the production process quite complex.  It consists of three main stages, piece part manufactures (injection moulding, fasteners, metal components etc), assembly, and packing.  The plant is divided into ten areas with 120 key resources to schedule and control.  90% of production is made against stock which currently translates into around 2,000 orders per month being released to the plant.

Before using Preactor, Marisio had highlighted a number of problems.  Firstly management had no real visibility of what was happening at shop floor level.  Supervisors and Operators were the only source of information; management could not make decisions based on the most up to date status of orders and plant availability.  Production control was carried by a single person supported by 3 planners. 

Secondly the data that was needed to support effective analysis of production capacity such as process times was not always available and the huge number of live orders meant that bottlenecks and inefficient production was buried in a sea of work in process.

To improve the situation Marisio looked for a planning and scheduling tool and found the perfect solution in Preactor 300 FCS. The project was carried out by a team consisting of staff from Exxis Corporation, a Chilean supplier of Preactor as well as Macola ERP, Tecmaran, the Brazilian Master Reseller of Preactor for South America, and Marisio staff led by Juan Ignacio Marisio, the Production Manager.

“The project took 5 months to complete, including the integration of our Macola ERP system with Preactor. We implemented Preactor in stages starting with the fasteners section which we believed was of medium complexity compared to other sections.”

The Macola ERP system provided product codes and routing for each order to Preactor (almost 4,000 codes in total).  The codes were then used to establish the constraints such as resources required, setup and process rates. Preactor’s calendars were used to set up shifts patterns.  Test data was then used to adjust the model until it met Marisio’s needs and finally reports configured for control of the section.  Once live and up and running, the model was extended to the next section until all were covered over the 5 months.

Since going live in 2004 Marisio has been able to achieve a huge and impressive range of benefits.  Firstly they now have reliable and up to date information which enables management to make better operational decisions. The company is no longer dependent on a single person to provide good production plans and analysis of capacity requirements is fast and reliable.  Feedback on schedule execution progress is now possible with feedback obtained as each operation is completed. The table below shows some metrics on benefits Marisio has achieved since 2004.

Juan Ignacio Marisio again.  “From our experience we would recommend that directors and managers are deeply involved in the project from the start and that staff from each part of the business is well informed of progress and what is expected of them.  You also need to break the project down into stages and have implementation targets focused on critical requirements.  We really appreciated the team approach used by Exxis and Tecmaran which contributed to this excellent outcome for our business.”