Many manufacturing companies, large and small, need to find efficient ways to schedule their materials, workers and machines to produce the good they sell. A small increase in efficiency can increase the profits dramatically, or may help a company to survive in difficult economic times. Often companies just use “rules of thumb” when solving this problem. EPCC has worked with several small companies to investigate the scheduling problem, and has developed generic software from which applications can be built.
ALMOND (1999)
Under the CALEDONIA initiative, EPCC worked with Scottish SME Almond Engineering, a leading manufacturer of precision-engineered packaging for the food industry. EPCC provided Almond with a software tool to significantly improve and enhance their production planning process.
The primary objective was to produce a software tool to automate and integrate Almond’s production planning process. To do […]
Arran Aromatics (2001-2002)
Arran Aromatics is one of the UK’s leading luxury toiletries manufacturers and today its range of products can be found in a network of world wide stockists and in the world’s finest hotels.
In a project supported by Scottish Enterprise, EPCC developed a software scheduling system for their manufacturing process.
A typical problem in a business like […]
Calman Technology (2001-2002)
Calman Technology design and manufacture touch panels for a range of application areas including medical equipment, security and household appliances. Every panel is constructed from numerous components with products typically assembled across several departments. Prior to approaching EPCC, Calman scheduled every order by hand, a process that was both meticulous and time consuming.
EPCC’s solution was […]
IPO (1997-2000)
IPO is a software application that solves the long-standing manufacturers’ dilemma of balancing efficient work scheduling and customer’s delivery deadlines. Given that a 1% increase in production scheduling is equal to a 10% increase in profits, the system could have enormous benefits for the manufacturing industry.
The key to the success of the system is the […]
SunGrid (2002-2004)
Sun Data and Compute Grids
This project was a collaborative work between EPCC and Sun Microsystems funded by the UK’s DTI/EPSRC e-Science Core Program, through the UK’s National e-Science Centre (NeSC).
The project developed an industry-strength fully Globus-enabled compute and data scheduler based around Grid Engine, Globus and a variety of data technologies.
The […]