FCI (BD) Ltd increases capacity utilisation by 5% using FastReactPlan

The challenge

Producing 18 million pieces per year, the group was faced with different challenges such as trying to meet reduced lead times, and dealing with complexity of planning their manufacturing whilst trying to continue the growth of the business.

The difficulties that arise out of trying to plan, coordinate and communicate efficiently using so many different spreadsheets, meant FCI had challenges in monitoring multiple critical paths (T&As) and optimising the use of existing capacity.

The solution

Looking to standardise the way all their teams work and enhance their processes, FCI (BD) looked for an industry specific solution.

Mr. M. A. Matin MBE, the Group Chairman at FCI said “We needed a tool that would improve visibility, flexibility and responsiveness, support the decision making process and enable us to generate achievable plans. We looked to Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan as they provide the leading production planning tool in the market.”

Matin continued “Since implementing FastReactPlan, this visual tool helps us to understand any possible late deliveries and identifies any problems in the critical path. This enabled management to focus on problem solving instead of fact finding. It also helped us take proactive actions and reduce fire-fighting.”

Mr. Zareef Cader, Finance Director at FCI also remarked “When looking at the ROI from FastReactPlan, we have received many benefits such as capacity fulfillment, less overbooking and an increase in performance to plan by 15% which means we have less unforeseen spill-over to the next month. Access to information on efficiencies have allowed us to plan better and we have now been able to fix product type by line – all this has resulted in overall capacity utilisation and factory efficiency increasing by around 5% whilst at the same time significantly improving on time delivery performance. FastReactPlan has certainly paid for itself.”

Dimitri Suraweera, Regional Head at Coats Digital stated “Working closely with the FCI team has enabled us to make sure the system provides the necessary benefits to the business, helping them to continue their growth. FastReactPlan was implemented within 3.5 months and the team immediately saw how the system will improve their processes. After 5 months, the team were using the system effectively and benefits began to shown throughout many areas of the company.”