A thoroughly positive balance with FASTEC 4 PRO
With the help of a fully automatic planning module of the MES FASTEC 4 PRO, the Emil Frei GmbH und Co. KG was able to achieve more transparency, increased production output and binding statements on production and delivery dates. Today, FreiLacke benefits from these improvements in production, logistics, controlling and sales. However, the project has its origin in planning.

The objective: More efficient production planning and more efficient transparency
Right at the start of the MES project, there were other specific requirements that the MES had to meet: Minimizing set-up and cleaning times, recognizing production bottlenecks and illustrating their effects, taking into account staff availability, plant capacity and working time models, as well as including plant maintenance and repairs in the planning.
FreiLacke decided in favor of FASTEC 4 PRO for the new MES, because it is possible to exactly map the necessary planning rules and processes thanks to the high flexibility and performance of the planning module.

Set-up rules determine the planning
The planning horizon for liquid coating production at FreiLacke is more than four weeks and includes over 300 production orders, which in turn can include up to five working operations. Fully automatic scheduling takes place on approximately 90 workstations and considers set-up times, deadlines, shifts etc. Due to the color changes, the process changeover or cleaning of a machine is subject to greatly varying set-up times that must be taken into account. The visible result of the automatic detailed planning is displayed in a Gantt diagram. On a timeline, the fully automatically scheduled work processes are displayed here, distributed to the individual workstations.

Increasing production output and high schedule reliability
Increased efficiency through planning tool: At FreiLacke, the production output depends on many different factors, such as the batch size and the proportion of large-batch production in relation to total production. Thanks to the use of the planning tool and the resulting increase in efficiency, it was possible to gradually increase production output. Due to the higher level of transparency, necessary capacity adjustments during periods of strong growth can be taken into account early on.

“The use of the planning tool from FASTEC ensures a significant improvement in performance, especially with regard to delivery date reliability.” Roland Bäurer, Authorized Signatory and Division Manager at FreiLacke