North America's largest heavy-duty truck maker now has a scheduling solution that gives it more reliable parameters for optimising production planning and better scheduling quality.
Tecnomatix, the driving force in Manufacturing Process Management (MPM), has announced that Freightliner LLC, North America's largest heavy-duty truck manufacturer and a subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler, has implemented eMPower software throughout all of its manufacturing plants nationwide, enabling Freightliner to significantly reduce the time it takes for daily production planning. Portland, Oregon-based Freightliner is using the eMPower eM-Sequencer scheduling tool from Tecnomatix to optimize the assignment of production orders among its assembly lines and to sequence orders per line, with the goal of achieving a constant product mix over time and a balanced workload throughout the day. eM-Sequencer is a turnkey solution for sequencing and allocating orders to assembly and feeder lines.

If many different product variants have to be produced, and sequencing of orders is restricted by a large number of rules, eM-Sequencer can help production planners improve schedule efficiency by reducing the manual effort involved in creating the most efficient schedules.

In addition, eM-Sequencer helps production planners quickly and easily generate optimized schedules to define and maintain scheduling rules.

The software is easily integrated into most existing manufacturing IT environments and can be connected to a wide variety of database management systems.

'Using eM-Sequencer, we now have a scheduling solution that gives us better and more reliable parameters for optimizing production planning and an overall better scheduling quality,' said Curtis Rhodes, industrial engineering manager, Freightliner LLC.

'After implementing eM-Sequencer in our planning environment, we were able to reduce the time it took to schedule a production sequence from three days to 30 minutes.' 'The growing use of eMPower solutions by market leaders like Freightliner truly reinforces the acceptance of our MPM solutions as critical components in the manufacturing process,' said Harel Beit-On, chairman and CEO of Tecnomatix Technologies.

'Freightliner manufactures more than one-third of the trucks sold in North America, and the dramatic planning time reductions made possible by eMPower, along with the accompanying cost savings, are helping them maintain their strong market leadership role.

Freightliner joins the growing list of worldwide market brand leaders in a variety of industries who are strengthening their competitive positions by implementing MPM strategies with eMPower solutions at their core.' About Freightliner LLC - Freightliner LLC is the leading heavy-duty truck manufacturer in North America.

The company produces and markets Class 3-8 vehicles under Freightliner, Sterling, Western Star, American LaFrance and Thomas Built buses nameplates.

It is a wholly owned subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler, the world's largest commercial vehicle manufacturer.

About Tecnomatix Technologies - Tecnomatix Technologies (NASDAQ: TCNO) is the driving force in Manufacturing Process Management (MPM).

Today's leading global manufacturers are adopting MPM solutions to expand revenue potential and reduce costs by enhancing manufacturing's ability to support the business strategy of choice.

These companies are using Tecnomatix eMPower MPM solutions to accelerate product introductions, shorten time to volume, and optimize production execution.

eMPower enables our customers to succeed with its collaborative, open platform and applications for defining, simulating, managing, and executing manufacturing processes across the extended enterprise.