Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Vanguard Rolls out TPO
May 20,
2014 by in Industry 
Vanguard Furniture has completed deployment of Plataine's Woodoptimizer, Production Scheduler and Shop-floor solutions for automatic and optimized manufacturing in two of its five manufacturing plants in Conover, N.C.
With deployment of "total production optimization," Vanguard management anticipates double-digit material savings and is able to significantly reduce their waste.
Vice President of Operations Kevin Holshouser, described the benefits.
"TPO helped us change the way we were operating, from design, through the nesting & cutting stages, up to the finished product," he said. "We no longer use 'static' nests but nest according to the actual inventory and thus avoid overcuts. The half sheets of plywood that we used to scrap are now being utilized, resulting in 12 percent material savings. With routine manual tasks now automated, we have freed up a CAD person that previously nested plywood to assist with new frames' product design. TPO's dynamic and automated workflows helped us shift to JIT manufacturing, which helped increase machine throughput. Today's process is streamlined; work orders come from WoodOptimizer™ and are optimally scheduled by Production Scheduler with real-time view of the production floor."
"We are excited to be part of Vanguard's path for optimized production efficiency and higher quality control, and confident that TPO's dynamic and holistic approach will allow Vanguard's management to concentrate more on growth and to meet their customers' needs through process automation," said Clay Bolick, Plataine's vice president of operations, North America.