Questions
What is Proplanner?Proplanner provides integrated Internet/Intranet-based software applications and on-line services to assist Process Engineers at medium and small manufacturers globally. These applications are designed to help Process Engineers improve, document and manage, their manufacturing processes in support of their Lean Manufacturing and Quality Improvement initiatives.
Who uses these applications and When are they used?Lean Manufacturing and Quality Improvement strategies are fundamentally based upon a well defined manufacturing process. The applications from Proplanner help you define, document, evaluate and collaborate on your manufacturing processes in both experimental and on-line modes. With our applications you can generate the necessary charts and reports while sharing this information between multiple users and across multiple projects, all via a simple connection to the web. Our applications are commonly used from when your new products are designed, and up until when you release them for initial production. Use Proplanner to ensure that your launches go smoothly and without surprises. Often our tools are used by Process Engineers, Industrial/Manufacturing Engineers, and Production Planners to design, chart and evaluate the manufacturing process. We often find that accountants, engineering management, shop floor management and product engineers will also use these tools extensively to view and query all of the detailed aspects of the manufacturing process. How do I save money with Proplanner?Proplanner helps your company save money in two main ways: 1) First our low-cost hosted solutions save you money over traditional and more expensive applications that have high acquisition (purchase, training, installation) costs and questionable benefits. With Proplanner you can download and install the software, set up multiple users and even receive startup training all within your first hour – and at no cost! Once you receive the benefits of our solution, you may continue using and sharing the applications among other members of your team for only $500/month for multi-user authoring access or $250/month for multi-user view-only access! 2) Second, our simple and powerful solutions will allow you to greatly reduce redundant data entry and errors associated with using the many dissimilar, homegrown, or manual methods and systems that you use today. With Proplanner you get applications that are well-engineered around the tasks you perform today in a way that you wish you could do them, because they were written by other process engineers just like you! Who is Proplanner?Proplanner is a joint spin-off of technology development from EDS (Electronic Data Systems), a team of Industrial Engineering graduate students from Iowa State University and the executive staff from CIMTECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION (Inventors of FactoryCAD and FLOW). Proplanner consists of 15 industrial engineers and 5 computer scientists (most with masters degrees) who are developing and supporting these integrated software modules using the new Microsoft.NET development environment. These engineers have significant programming and field engineering experience, and are led by Dave Sly, PE who has over 15 years of industry experience in the development of commercial manufacturing software applications. How long for an individual engineer to get up to speed in order to apply and use it?We anticipate that engineers familiar with the domains of the various modules (such as lean process charting, predetermined time estimation, line balancing, plant layout, product costing, etc.) should be able to come up to speed in a few hours (via internet based training). Engineers may need additional training in these domains outside of that available with training on the software. We can assist with that training at our facility in Ames, or send an engineer to the customer if needed. How do I know that my data is safe?Proplanner is very concerned about the security and uptime of customer data. Our applications are hosted by a professional hosting firm that maintains two separate facilities within Iowa that are in different communities and phone exchanges. These locations are guarded 24 hours a day and maintain full redundancy between them. This firm handles approximately $100M in daily transactions and employs a team of full-time security experts who try to breach the security of applications hosted in their facilities. In addition, our applications are designed such that each account has its own independent database structure, and that all access to this database is logged and reported to the system administrator. Information to and from the site uses 128bit SSL encryption, and we offer IP address filtering as an additional level of security for our clients. In addition, we provide detailed access reports to your account administrators so that they can see who is accessing your data, when they are accessing it and for how long. At Proplanner we work hard to ensure that your data will be at least as secure and accessible to your staff as it would be within your own firewall. In addition, Proplanner offers all of its software products and server technologies to clients for internal hosting within your firewall should usage, performance or security issues make this more desirable. I already use a Time Measurement system such as Most, Modapts or MTM. How can Proplanner help me?While you can use Proplanner to replace those systems in the estimation of pre-determined work times, many users find it easier to simply link the data from those systems into the integrated Proplanner environment. These integrations are relatively straightforward, and a quick call to one of our Industrial Engineers can show you how. Once the data is integrated, you will be able to leverage the power of Proplanner in managing, planning, evaluating and charting all aspects of your manufacturing process. How does Proplanner interface to my current systems?All of our applications use simple comma-delimited ASCII text files and XML documents for both import and export. We can even write direct SQL interfaces capable of extracting and updating information in other SQL-oriented database applications, or use one of our existing application-direct interfaces for systems such as PDM, SAP or MOST. Contact a Proplanner engineer for more information on how we can help you integrate the power of Proplanner into your data environment. What does Proplanner mean when they say Process Engineering Solutions (software, services, or both)?Proplanner is an Internet/Intranet software company. We primarily offer applications to assist Process Engineers in developing, launching and improving new and existing products. This implies that our applications are commercially deployed products with built-in flexibility to accommodate a variety of uses. As such, Proplanner is constantly improving upon, and expanding the flexibility and range of interfaces available for those products. We achieve this development by working directly with our customers to see what we can do to improve the value that we deliver. Often these customer-directed projects involve the development of interfaces and additional capabilities that eventually become standard additions to future releases of our products. These customer-directed development and consulting activities provide the full range of services that we provide to our customers and are what we refer to when we say “Solutions – not just Software”. I already have in-house developed process engineering applications. How can Proplanner help me?It is common for nearly all companies to have a significant number of in-house developed applications for MSDS management, shop floor documentation, time estimation and more. Often these applications are technically out-of-date, poorly integrated, supported and documented. We have even seen cases where companies are still managing critical production information on out-dated Vax-VMS systems, and where the original author retired many years ago. These are the perfect Proplanner customers. Our industrial engineers will study your current systems and recommend ways that we can integrate our applications into your operations with a minimal amount of disruption. We will port your data and bring you back on-line with systems that are always up-to-date, cost-effective, easy-to-use, well-documented and quick-to-deploy. You’ll get additional capabilities and productivity and are likely to spend less money all at the same time; with Proplanner engineers helping you all the way. I use MS-Office tools (such as Word, Excel, Frontpage, Access and others) and AutoCAD/Visio for most of my process engineering. What additional benefits could I expect by switching to Proplanner?MS Office and AutoCAD/Visio are an excellent start to an integrated, cost-effective and easy-to-use Process Engineering initiative. In fact, MS-Office applications are tightly integrated into the Proplanner environment. By using the new .NET development environment from Microsoft, Proplanner is capable of providing levels of integration that are not available with other platform independent or Java-dependent systems. Proplanner wraps these applications and datasets around an integrated and relational data model that makes access, reuse and update of this information more efficient and practical. With Proplanner, we can greatly boost the productivity of MS Office tools for Process Engineers and Manufacturing Planners throughout your organization, and provide this access to all authorized users over the Internet/Intranet. We have a sophisticated MRP/ERP system such as SAP. Doesn’t this do the same thing as what Proplanner is offering?This is a very common misconception, and is prevalent within your accounting and IT departments. In fact, there is very little overlap between Proplanner and MRP/ERP, although our applications can populate required information for MRP and ERP systems. As you can see from the diagram below,
Proplanner sits between Product Engineering and Manufacturing Operations. We help engineers determine how to manufacture your new products and improve the manufacture of your existing products. Then Process routings, time estimates, equipment requirements, production sequencing and staffing levels can be output from Proplanner applications into MRP/ERP systems from which you can manage your operations. How can Proplanner offer so much functionality and support for such a low price?Traditional engineering software sales activities are very expensive to perform. Most engineering software companies spend over 50% of their total revenues on direct sales activities, and up to 70% if you include marketing. This means that over $7,500 of a typical $15,000 engineering software product went towards travel costs and sales salaries before you’ve even had a chance to use it. Proplanner is a very different kind of company. We offer our solutions over the Internet and provide you with the training, phone consulting and on-line free evaluations to help you make the best decision for your company. Using our monthly fee for concurrent licenses we are able to efficiently charge you for your growing usage as you receive value from our applications. Essentially, we get paid as you receive benefits, and we both save money by not deploying high-cost, high-pressure up-front sales tactics. How much more development is planned on your part, like additional modules?We will continue to enhance the functionality of our existing modules, as well as add additional modules based upon the prioritized feedback from our distributors and customers. In addition, we anticipate assisting with the development of software-based translation/conversion utilities to aid in helping the customer get data in, and out of the software to other systems (such as MRP, SAP, MES, etc). We have two modules in planning (ergonomics assessment and container management). More modules are being recommended almost daily. Any plans to add any plant layout analysis, perhaps similar to FactoryFLOW??We have developed this system to be fully compatible with the FactoryFLOW data requirements. This will allow you to move data between this system to/from FactoryFLOW. We do not intend to replicate the FactoryFLOW functionality (outside of simple Euclidian diagramming) within our process engineering environment. Any module planned for facility management-ongoing monitoring and optimization of plant utilities?We have not yet considered such a module. However, we intend to develop new modules based upon customer and distributor requests. Currently the Ergonomics Assessment and Containerization Management modules are in planning. Any module planned for tracking piece part data, including actual time per piece?From a planning perspective, we do intend to report the total assembly, move and machining time for every part. This information will also be available within the costing module. We do not intend to add a capability to track parts in their plant on a real-time basis (such as would be available within an MES application).
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For more information, send an email to PMC's Proplanner team. |
