Joe Van Wagner, Production Manager for Cummins Engine, selected Resource Manager to assist in scheduling labor and machine resources. "We are in the midst of changing our corporate system and neither (old or new) system will handle job shop management the way we run our shops. We need a flexible tool for planning and scheduling labor out several months. In addition, we need to schedule day-day machine operations per master schedule. The Resource Manager for Excel is the perfect fit for a stop-gap solution for these areas."

Cummins Engine has 33 locations around U.S. and accessories engines for custom applications. According to Mr. Van Wagner, "We like the fact that the Resource Manager has a Bill-Of-Resource that can include the tool, labor, and machine requirements for scheduling the shop. With our old legacy system from Xerox, we had only basic parts and engine model information for scheduling, now we have detailed man-hours and routings available. We like the ability, with the Resource Manager, to define load and select a realistic promise date for our customers -- we have already seen an increase in customer satisfaction." Joe continues, "The flexibility of the product is pretty fantastic. We are able to download our Bills-Of-Material from the AS400 directly into the Resource Manager, add labor and routings, and immediately generate master schedules. In addition to master scheduling, we make parts for engines and distribution and can use the Resource Manager to schedule production in this make-to-stock application. The neat graphing capability gives us an excellent visual on what is happening, or needs to happen".