FNsteel Completes its Second and Third Quintiq Implementation - Integrates Quintiq Company Planner and Additional Quintiq Scheduler to its Existing Quintiq Landscape

'S-HERTOGENBOSCH, The Netherlands, July 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Quintiq, a leading provider of Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) solutions, today announced that FNsteel, formerly Ovako Wire and a leading European manufacturer of quality wire products, has gone live with two additional Quintiq planning solutions: Company Planner and Metal Scheduler for continuous casting. These solutions are integrated with the Quintiq Metal Scheduler implemented at the wire post-treatment plant in 2006, providing FNsteel with a complete tactical and operational planning application suite. With Quintiq, FNsteel has improved production efficiency and is now able to offer superior customer service by consistently delivering orders on time.

FNsteel produces and processes wire rod and PC strand for automotive, construction and general engineering. The company's production facilities are located in Koverhar, Finland where it produces billets for its wire rod rolling mills located in Dalsbruk, Finland and Alblasserdam, The Netherlands. At its Alberlasserdam site, FNsteel also has a modern post-treatment plant for additional wire processing activities, like pickling, annealing and drawing.

Automatic tactical planning with full transparency and control

At FNsteel, Quintiq Company Planner provides an integrated planning solution for the tactical planning of its four factories. Quintiq Company Planner optimizes the entire metals supply chain to minimize lead times and lower stock levels. It provides planners and managers with full transparency and control over the entire production chain.

The solution covers resource capacity planning, the creation of production, purchase and transport orders, material reservation, rolling campaigns, transportation, stock management for multiple service concepts and sales budgets. Specific to FNsteel, Company Planner also handles the sea transport planning from FNsteel production sites to customers, as well as between plants.

Equally important, Company Planner is integrated with FNsteel's ERP systems, factory scheduling systems and online order placement system. It includes an online due date determination system, which sales personnel use to determine accurate delivery promise dates. This helps FNsteel improve customer service and satisfaction.

"The Quintiq solutions have been configured to match the planning requirements of each of our factories," commented Markus Malinen, Director Logistics and ICT at FNsteel. "From our experience, offering this exact fit is crucial to the quality and relevance of the planning. Moreover, Quintiq is user-friendly and gives planners full control over the planning - providing excellent results."

Efficient order planning against existing inventory

FNsteel now schedules the production of the steelmaking and continuous casting lines at its Koverhar plant with Quintiq Metal Scheduler. Fully integrated with Company Planner and the FNSteel Koverhar MES system, the Quintiq solution performs the operational planning of the casters and constantly fine-tunes the production schedule so it is in sync with the tactical plans.

Quintiq Scheduler enables managers to react in real time to production events and to quickly revise the schedule. In addition, with visibility into the customer orders behind the work orders, there is better delivery performance of steel billets to the downstream processing units. With improved on-time delivery and optimized casting sequence length, less stock is needed.

Francois Eijgelshoven, Director Business Unit Manufacturing at Quintiq, commented: "The 2006 implementation of Quintiq Metal Scheduler enabled FNsteel to improve capacity utilization in the wire processing unit and decrease lead times. With that, we successfully demonstrated our ability to expertly support special segments of the steel industry. Now, with Company Planner and Metal Scheduler for continuous casting, FNsteel's second and third Quintiq implementation, FNsteel can expect to quickly reach its goals of increased efficiency and higher delivery performance."

About FNSteel: http://www.fnsteel.com

About Quintiq: http://www.quintiq.com/about-us