The growth of the Vitec group in the last decade has led to a growth in turnover that has gone from 172 million pounds in 2008 to the current 378. Among the reasons for this growth is the continuous attention by the group to the most advanced IT tools on the market. For this reason, the world’s leading company in the production of premium products for creating and sharing images, has been planning production processes with Cybertec since 2008. The implementation and use of the Advanced Planning and Scheduling tool is described to us by three members of the Imaging solutions division: Dario Scudellaro – Plant Planner, Lanfranco Tarabini – Head of ERP integrations with external systems and Massimiliano Maccagnan – Value stream manager for photos and lightning.
The search for an integrated planning and scheduling tool
Vitec started looking for an advanced solution for production planning, after realizing that the MRP they were equipped with was not competitive, especially following the increase in business complexity. As often happens, in fact, the ERP used at the time by Vitec had brought with it an MRP module, with a series of difficulties.
In the first place, there were performance problems with respect to the calculation of requirements, an aspect that cannot be underestimated. It was not possible to “spin” the MRP more than once a day, moreover this had to happen at night.
“Vitec was looking for a vertical that had performance that could spin the MRP in case of need. The only product able to do the calculation in a few minutes and at full capacity was CyberPlan.” Massimiliano Maccagnan – Value Stream Manager photos and lightning
Another issue was related to the service model. Vitec plans using both MTS (Make To Stock) and ATO (Assembly To Order) logic and the combination of the two service types gives the overall service model. The need to combine these two needs was difficult to solve with an ERP and therefore an alternative solution was sought.
Finally, the company’s growth had led to a contextual increase in complexity; this was an additional reason that led Vitec to look for an APS capable of managing this complexity of requirements towards the factory.
The APS software selection
To select the best APS on the market, Vitec decided to see a series of potential suppliers and therefore carry out an accurate software selection. What emerged was that CyberPlan was superior to all the solutions offered by competitors.
“Cybertec made us a proposal that could solve all our problems. We saw a number of competitors but their solutions were not comparable.”
What struck Vitec most of all was the speed of execution of the MRP and the need to have a two-tier planning determined by the service model used.
CyberPlan was therefore able to raise the standards of Vitec, which already had an extremely articulated and refined planning. Planning lists were used to plan, which facilitated the implementation of the APS software.
The implementation of the CyberPlan APS
The interface has been designed to enhance two-tier planning. One level works mainly on raw materials and semi-finished products, with demand coming from ATO and MTS orders. The second level works mainly on the finished product with the part coming from the MTS and with the part of ATO that is no longer forecast but has now become order in all respects. Therefore, the two levels are able to work on different horizons.
The implementation was managed by Vitec through the formation of a dedicated team, composed of the plant manager and the group IT manager together with the plant IT manager. This team worked together with the Cybertec team to make sure the implementation went as smoothly as possible, and it was a great project.
How do you use CyberPlan?
With CyberPlan, Vitec manages both the purchasing process and the production scheduling process. Starting from the production plan, it generates all the purchase proposals necessary for the material planners who verify and validate them for the management of the supply order. The production planning part is carried out with excellent execution speed and is done at two levels, which is not possible with all tools.
“We have chosen in a conscious and structured way to keep the ERP management system as a central element; for us it functions as a repository. – Maccagnan says – This is because ERP is great for communicating with other systems, which has allowed us to have no data integrity problems so far. The data flow management structure with CyberPlan is extremely robust and fully automatic. In fact, import and export are launched every day in a totally autonomous way by the system.”
What results do you get by planning with CyberPlan?
Today, thanks to CyberPlan, we are able to manage all the production complexity of a large group such as Vitec, whose product range is extremely wide and varied. In addition to this, we manage production in the two types of production adopted today: Assembly To Order and Make To Stock. Finally, we manage production complexity in just a few minutes, monitoring warehouses, service levels and providing the factory with a synchronised plan between purchases and production.
What aspects of CyberPlan do you appreciate most?
Dario Scudellaro, plant planner, says that “It is certainly a high-performance tool for the amount of data, items and codes that it manages in our company. In fact, these data are divided according to the different bills, cycles, methods and production logics. It is indeed a solid, high-performance and reliable tool “.
The Photo and Lightning Value Stream Manager, Eng. Massimiliano Maccagnan, adds that “CyberPlan is indisputable both from a performance point of view and from the possibility of configuration, flexibility and level of data analysis. It is an excellent working tool”.
Vitec Group
Vitec Group is a world-leading provider of premium products and solutions for the image and video content creation market.
The group employs around 1,700 people worldwide in 11 different countries and is organised into three divisions: Imaging Solutions, Production Solutions and Creative Solutions.
Vitec designs, manufactures and distributes high-performance products and solutions for the imaging world. Some of them are: tripods for cameras, electronic accessories for cameras, robotic arms for cameras, LED lights, portable power supplies, monitors and bags.
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