Company Context
GS Gomma is a small manufacturing enterprise in Piedmont specializing in elastomer and silicone molding. It serves diverse sectors—electronics, automotive, fashion—and operates with extremely high operational flexibility, often required to adapt to order modifications even within the same day.
This responsiveness is enabled by an integrated management system, consisting of the legacy ERP and an advanced MES for elastomer molding, through which the company manages production, warehousing, inventory, and, most importantly, industrial management control.
To support planning, a finite capacity scheduler was also introduced, a simple yet effective version of the APS module, which generates realistic work plans based on actual production capacities rather than theoretical data.
The production facility comprises approximately 20 injection molding presses, alongside kitting, cryogenic deflashing, quality control, and packaging phases.
Entrepreneur's Requirements
The primary necessity was to improve industrial management control, obtaining a precise snapshot of actual production costs: effective times, scrap rates, and productivity per item and mold.
Concurrently, the company required:
real-time data on production progress,
a historical log of downtimes with their respective causes,
a system that allowed for planning based on the actual production capacities of the presses.
Objective: to transition from an “extreme programming” management style to a structured management approach, driven by reliable figures.
Proposed Solution: Complete Digitalization with Industrial Cloud's AgileFactory MES + APS
The project entailed the total digitalization of the production process, eliminating paper documentation and introducing a fully tracked, automated, and integrated operational workflow.
Digitalization of the Production Workflow Panel PCs were installed at every workstation, through which operators daily receive their production tasks (phases and operations). The production manager launches orders into the system, which automatically analyzes:
current machine load,
orders in production and in queue,
actual availability of the presses,
effective presence of operators during the shift. The system thereby generates dynamic production plans, which update automatically with every variation in resources or operational conditions.
Operational Logging and Actual Progress Operators log their shift clock-ins and clock-outs, allowing the system to precisely ascertain the available production resources. The plan is updated by replacing theoretical data with actual information regarding:
actual progress of operations,
availability of production units (machine + operator),
quantities of compliant products manufactured.
Integrated Material and Warehouse Management The system manages:
inbound and outbound material movements,
automatic calculation of theoretical picking based on production and bills of materials (BOM),
the ability to declare actual material picks,
batch traceability at every phase. This has improved inventory accuracy, traceability, and material control.
Automatic Calculation of the Full Industrial Cost The system automatically calculates the full industrial cost, factoring in:
actual machine times,
operator times,
material consumption,
the allocated share of indirect departmental costs (overheads),
energy consumption. These values update automatically, enabling an accurate analysis of profitability per item, mold, machine, and work order.
Results Achieved with Industrial Cloud's AgileFactory MES + APS
The implementation of the MES + APS enables GS Gomma to achieve numerous measurable improvements. The reported values reflect typical benchmarks for elastomer molding enterprises operating 15–30 presses that have introduced advanced digitalization and planning systems:
30–40% Improvement in Plan Accuracy The finite capacity scheduler mitigates delays, identifies bottlenecks proactively, and synchronizes the theoretical load with actual capacity.
Objective and Systematic Industrial Management Control It becomes possible to precisely calculate actual production costs. Generally, this enables:
price revision for loss-making items (5–15% of the catalog),
identification of low-margin products,
reduction of variances between theoretical and actual costs from 20–25% to less than 5%.
5–12% Reduction in Scrap Rates Achieved through defect traceability per mold, cavity, and operator.
Enhanced Responsiveness to Customer Demands The system allows the enterprise to:
react to same-day order modifications,
recalculate the production plan in a matter of seconds,
provide highly reliable lead times.
In summary, the company transitions from a reactive and partially manual management style to a predictive approach based on reliable data, resulting in a substantial increase in operational efficiency and market competitiveness.
