NIST MEP and Industrial Damping Leader Improve On-Time Delivery

The Challenge

ACE Controls, Inc., a leader in industrial damping and motion control solutions located in Farmington, Michigan, faced growing challenges with production scheduling in their machine shop. The company needed to immediately improve their day-to-day scheduling capabilities to meet increasing customer demand and maintain their reputation for reliable delivery. Without adequate visibility into workcenter loading and production capacity, the team struggled to provide accurate promise dates and optimize their manufacturing throughput.

The Solution

Supported by the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) through the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center, ACE Controls evaluated scheduling solutions that could deliver immediate results. Resource Manager was selected both for its strong benefit-to-cost ratio and for its compatibility with the company's existing Excel platform, already used to communicate manufacturing reports across the organization. This meant minimal disruption to existing workflows while adding powerful scheduling and capacity planning capabilities.

Key Results

The implementation was fast and straightforward, allowing ACE Controls to start seeing benefits almost immediately. The scheduling team gained the ability to model different production scenarios, visualize workcenter loading, and evaluate the impact of schedule changes before committing to them.

According to Dave Teumer, Buyer and Scheduling Manager, “What I especially like about the Resource Manager is that it was simple to get installed and up and running. We have improved our on-time delivery by being able to view the impact of different production schedules and workcenter loading. The product is so flexible and adaptable, it is quite easy to model different scenarios to determine if a certain method or schedule can actually benefit our bottom line.”

With Resource Manager in place, ACE Controls transformed their scheduling process from reactive to proactive, resulting in measurable improvements to on-time delivery and overall production efficiency.

— Dave Teumer, Buyer and Scheduling Manager, ACE Controls, Inc.