ZDAS innovates its planning system by deploying LOGIS Production Planner
The engineering-metallurgical complex ŽĎAS, a well-known Czech manufacturer of rolling mill equipment, forming machines and tools, carried out a significant upgrade of its Advanced Production Planning and Scheduling (APS) system. The new planning system is now operational and enabling ŽĎAS to manage production in a more flexible, efficient and reliable way.
ŽĎAS has been using advanced production planning technologies for nearly 20 years. As early as 2006, ŽĎAS started to plan production using i2 Factory Planner and thus became one of the first companies in the Czech engineering industry to use APS technology for production management.
In 2023, ŽĎAS decided to significantly upgrade its planning system in order to make its production management capabilities even more efficient, reliable and flexible in response to changes in the production and business situation. The backbone of the upgraded planning system is the APS tool LOGIS Production Planner.
“Despite the major transformation that ŽĎAS had to overcome as part of the innovation, the implementation of the new planning system did not encounter any major obstacles. This was undoubtedly helped by the quality of preparation on the part of ŽĎAS, which consumed only 16 man-days of the specialists of LOGIS during the innovation. This makes ŽĎAS the most rapid planning system innovation we have encountered to date,” adds Prokop Havlík, Sales Director for Discrete Manufacturing at LOGIS.
František Beneš, IT analyst at ŽĎAS, evaluates the implementation of the new planning system “During the innovation works, we managed to capitalize on our long-term experience with operating the original APS system as well as the fact that the data structures of LOGIS Production Planner are built in a way that is similar to the original solution. Even though it was not a one-to-one migration, this allowed us to quickly get oriented and prepare for the new solution largely on our own, and even without a massive workload on the part of the involved specialists at ŽĎAS.”
The new planning system enables ŽĎAS to prepare production plans that are more advantageous in terms of operational efficiency and customer satisfaction than those prepared in the previous system. From a functional point of view, the new system of ŽĎAS offers, for example, better coherence of individual iterations of production plans or the possibility to configure logic for interactive balancing of production resources. ŽĎAS has also taken advantage of the extensive customization possibilities of the planning system and has modified the data structures and information available on the individual screens to make working with the APS system even more efficient.
“Healthily developing companies understand that without constant pressure to improve customer satisfaction and their own operational efficiency, future success in increasingly demanding markets is hard to imagine,” adds Mr. Havlík. “I am glad that we have succeeded in increasing the value that the enterprise planning system brings to ŽĎAS as well.”
“I would also like to acknowledge the professionalism of the support provided by LOGIS,” says Mr. Beneš. “LOGIS Production Planner has proven to be an advanced next-generation solution compared to the original solution, and the experts at LOGIS have demonstrated a high level of industry awareness and professionalism.”
About ZDAS
ŽĎAS is a Czech manufacturer focused on forming machines, equipment for free forging, scrap processing equipment, hydraulic presses, equipment for processing of rolled products, equipment for material straightening, inspection and straightening lines for bar processing and piece deliveries for rolling mills. The company also specializes in production of castings from 200 to 50.000 kg, forgings from 20 to 9000 kg, ingots from 500 to 20.000 kg and models or press tools mainly from the automotive industry.
ŽĎAS is a traditional Czech manufacturer with a name all over the world. The plant in Ždár nad Sázavou in Czech Republic employs about 1.500 people with a turnover of about CZK 2.5 billion.
About LOGIS
LOGIS is a provider of business services and a producer of Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) and Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) software. The services and software of LOGIS enable its customers to achieve tangible improvements of operational efficiency and customer delivery performance. LOGIS has implemented approximately 100 planning systems around the world in the last quarter of century for customers in metals industry and discrete manufacturing (machinery, automotive, etc.). Its customers range from relatively small local producers to extremely complex, large-scale manufacturing enterprises with demanding planning environments.
