24-09-2024

Multi-Ply Components Ltd boosts efficiency and production throughput using Plataine’s AI-powered production planning & scheduling

Multi-Ply’s new AI solution cuts planning time from hours to minutes, optimizes decisions for purchasing additional resources and automates both short and long-term planning of over 10,000 tasks

Plataine, a leading provider of AI-powered optimization solutions, is pleased to announce that Multi-Ply Components Ltd., a UK-based global leader in the design and manufacture of carbon fiber components for medical x-ray imaging, has successfully implemented Plataine’s AI-powered Production Scheduler, enhancing their production efficiency.

With over 35 years of expertise, Multi-Ply has established itself as a specialist in delivering high-quality components to leading manufacturers of medical equipment. Multi-Ply moved onto a purpose built development on the Enterprise Zone’s Eastern gateway in December 2022.

Prior to deploying Plataine’s solution, Multi-Ply’s production planning process was fragmented and time-consuming, with the planner spending hours each week creating plans using a spreadsheet. Department managers had to then develop more detailed specific departmental plans. The manual process was laborious, lacked real-time visibility into order progress, causing delays in identifying and addressing unexpected issues on the factory floor. In addition, the spreadsheet could not support strategic decisions of buying new equipment and presenting the impact of future investments.

“We manage to smoothly transition our planning process into a digital one, allowing us to create accurate and optimized production plans in large scale in several minutes, and improve factory throughput.” Lucas Morgan, Technical & NPI Director at Multi-Ply

By implementing Plataine’s AI-powered Production Scheduler, Multi-Ply is transforming its planning and production process, allowing the company to automatically generate an optimized and highly detailed three-month production plan within minutes. The work orders are automatically transferred from SAP to Plataine software via API. Plataine’s Production Scheduler efficiently manages over 10,000 tasks across 40 stations and 19 departments, drastically reducing the planners’ workload, allowing them to respond to issues as they occur and keep the plan up to date. The solution provides real-time visibility into production progress, enabling operators to report on task start and completion instantly, eliminating the need for daily updates and production meetings to spot issues. Multi-Ply production planner can now quickly respond to unexpected changes on the factory floor, improving throughput and overall operational efficiency.

Lucas Morgan, Technical & NPI Director at Multi-Ply, commented: “I am excited to work with Plataine, as we manage to smoothly transition our planning process into a digital one, allowing us to create accurate and optimized production plans in large scale in several minutes, and improve factory throughput. In addition, the functionality to test various scenarios is priceless, giving us the ability to justify the need and cost of additional resources. With Plataine, our production leaders have full visibility of production progress in real-time, enabling us to make data-driven operational and strategic decisions. This is a long-term journey together”