Ottawa, Canada, August 6, 2003 - Webplan Corporation, today announced Thomas Built Buses, a manufacturer of commercial transit buses, school buses, and specialty vehicles, has selected Webplan as the planning system of record at their new plant in High Point, North Carolina.
The new school bus manufacturing plant will be complete in early 2004 and will serve as the company’s state-of-the-art center for building conventional-style school buses. For over a year, four of Thomas’ existing plants, collaborating with over eighty suppliers have successfully been using Webplan. Webplan® 7, a powerful solution capable of analyzing and comparing real-time analytics within a single Excel-like spreadsheet, in a matter of seconds, will handle Thomas’s forecast consumption of each component of the very complex bill of materials for their state-driven bus model.
Thomas will utilize EDS’s Teamcenter Enterprise for the engineering design phase of a new bus and component options while managing the intellectual assets of the bus and all of its components. Teamcenter will handle the BOM generation for every bus, which is a unique bus number, from sales order down all the way through to where it is passed to Webplan for the manufacturing planning. Webplan will also link into EDS's Teamcenter Enterprise to ensure Design for Manufacturability; as a result Thomas’ Engineering team can take into account existing inventory, material availability, and manufacturing constraints when rolling out new or changed product designs. They will also use Webplan to communicate design changes and new product specifications to Thomas Built Buses’ suppliers.
“The Webplan solution enables us to capture a complete planning and scheduling picture, and achieve an orderly flow of materials through the entire manufacturing process, using real-time operational data, ” said Kent Garno Material Control Manager, Thomas Built Buses.
“Being part of Thomas Built Buses’ new lean-based facility will showcase Webplan’s advanced decision making and collaborative capabilities,” said Douglas Colbeth President and Chief Executive Officer, Webplan. “Thomas Built buses has been a Webplan customer for over a year now, and we’re pleased to play a key role in their continued growth.”
