Kerakoll

KERAKOLL is a leading manufacturer of materials and services in the applied chemical sector for building applications. The company turnover is above 300 million Euros, employs more than 1,340 people, can count on 12 branches in the world and on 10 production plants located all over Europe.
Over more than 40 years Kerakoll has been able to become leader in the domestic market and then to carve out a leading place in the worldwide market for GreenBuilding construction materials. However the

process of internationalisation and an increasing worldwide approach have not led Kerakoll to lose its identity: the company mantains its original values, focused on sustainable innovation. With more than 100% eco-friendly1.700 products the company is a worldwide leader in Greenbuilding. Innovation, environment sustainability, health safeguard and indoor wellbeing, high quality living and authenticity are the founding Kerakoll values

In a market context such as that of Kerakoll, where response speed is increasingly important, one of the primary needs is to have advanced equipment programming tools that can easily integrate with plant supervision systems. MES, on the other hand, allows all data relating to the actual production trend to be acquired and controlled in order to monitor the progress of orders, process factory KPIs and manage complete traceability in production.

“In 2011 we decided to implement COMPASS in Kerakoll, starting with a “pilot”project in Zimella plant, where we produce paints and coverings, to progressively roll it out in the other group manufacturing plants.” says Stefano Ghisellini, Central Engineering Dept. “ The new Scheduing& MES software has helped us to maintain, despite the  relevant  increase in business complexity,  our high customer  service level performance, which is one of our distinctive features.”

MES – Manufacturing Execution System

Kerakoll MES application is based on a data collection infrastructure based on touch-screen panels installed in the different departments. These panels are integrated with the PLC devices supervising all production lines. Custom and specific data collection procedures have been developed for each department, to be able to take into account the distinctive features related to the manufacturing process: component doling out, bulk production, quality control, packaging. The shop floor procedures have been designed to obtain all data required to produce the most accurate and feasible finite capacity schedules as well as to perform statistical analysis (production KPIs). Such goals have also been achieved requesting the minimum effort to floor operators: the system is based procedures with different level of automation, ranging from manual to completely  authomatic ones.

The shop floor panel

The main functions of Kerakoll MES panels are described below:

• display of line/machine production schedule, at resource level
• activity transaction posting (time and quantity)
• downtimes causal posting
• sampling
• quality control procedures
• production batch posting (tracking function)

All data collected are constantly reviewed to measure and analyse our production KPIs (machine and labour efficiency, downtimes, scraps… ) using COMPASS standard tools

Finite capacity scheduling

As mentioned before, customer service level is an increasingly key factor in our marketplace. Implementing COMPASS finite capacity scheduling tool, natively integrated with floor supervision systems has allowed Kerakoll to maintain the highest standards in service level, assuring ex-works delivery time (from customer order data entry to truck shipment ) within 36 hours, even if we are currently facing a phenomenon of growing complexity. The first and undisputed driver in Kerakoll scheduling model is obviously the requested end date of production orders. Thisis always the primary and key goal to meet while defining the production schedule. The main constraint is resource finite capacity (lines/machines and labour) as well as semifinished and raw materials availability.

Manufacturing orders are automatically split into batches to generate production runs compatible with the capacity of the specific (alternative!) mixer allocated within the frozen horizon.

The dynamic sequencing function available into COMPASS scheduling engine is a powerful tool designed to optimise production sequences as it aims at minimising changeover time. In our context, the sequencing rules  are designed to minimise washing and cleaning procedures in the mixing department, while bulk and size are the drivers for the packaging department. Finally operations at the tinting department are sequenced by size, priority and carrier.

The production schedules generated are used to elaborate materials picking list which are then dispatched to the WMS system.

Thanks to this implementation, Kerakoll has achieved the following results:

• ex works delivery time reduction: from customer order entry to truck shipment ≤ 36 hours in a growing complexity environment

• resource optimisation: labour, machines, warehouse space
• waste reduction
• real-time control on production events
• centralised availability of information