Location: 97199 Ochsenfurt, Germany · Industry: Contract manufacturing, mechanical engineering, metalworking, plant engineering · Products: Large weldments, mechanical engineering components, plant engineering assemblies, contract manufacturing and assembly services · ERP: ams.erp · Website: https://www.kinkele.de · S4P modules: ams.leitstand powered by 4APS
Initial situation
As a large, broadly diversified contract manufacturer in mechanical and plant engineering, Kinkele faces the challenge of simultaneously managing an enormous variety of variants in lot size 1, fluctuating project workloads and high price pressure. Capacity utilisation, on-time delivery and margin management therefore become increasingly critical success factors. To remain profitable in this environment, the company needed to move from a relatively coarse, approximate project planning in ams.erp to a significantly more detailed fine planning that takes resources such as personnel and machines into account. Only with such fine planning can bottlenecks be identified early, delivery dates committed reliably, rework and downtime minimised and complex major projects with many individual orders synchronised so that quality and on-time delivery are assured.
Challenge
In contract manufacturing with lot size 1 and high project complexity, planning accuracy is the central challenge. Without resource-specific fine planning, bottlenecks were only visible late, delivery commitments were difficult to make reliably and the synchronisation of parallel large-scale projects with many individual orders was too slow. The goal was to move from approximate weekly or monthly planning to day-accurate, resource-specific scheduling that can incorporate short-notice changes and simulate alternative scenarios in real time.
Solution
After an intensive selection process, Kinkele chose ams.leitstand powered by 4APS for backlog-free scheduling of orders and operations from ams.erp. With this integrated fine planning solution, Kinkele can now control the high variant diversity and the many concurrently running projects not merely at week or month level but with day and resource accuracy, detect bottlenecks early and simulate alternative scenarios. Machine utilisation and personnel deployment become more transparent, delivery dates are committed more realistically and met more reliably, while unplanned lead time extensions and costly changeover or waiting times are significantly reduced. The close coupling of ERP and scheduling creates a single data basis for sales, work preparation, manufacturing and project management.
Results and benefits
Instead of relying on intuition and rough weekly plans, Kinkele now keeps its complex contract manufacturing visibly in step with ams.leitstand powered by 4APS: through backlog-free fine planning in real time, on-time delivery improves, utilisation of key resources increases measurably and lead and waiting times decrease — with simultaneously higher transparency for sales, work preparation and manufacturing. Kinkele detects bottlenecks early, works through alternatives via what-if simulation and can give customers realistic, dependable delivery dates — a clear competitive advantage in a market defined by schedule pressure and individual projects.