Paper machine scheduling yields gains at James River Naheola mill

In recent years, as computer hardware and software grew increasingly affordable and capable, James River management became interested in new techniques for the development of manufacturing schedules. The use of scheduling decision-support software had been considered for several years at James River's Naheola mill in Pennington, Alabama. The available scheduling packages were evaluated extensively by mill and corporate logistics teams, who decided to try the MIMI (Manager for Interactive Modeling Interfaces) Planning and Scheduling System from Chesapeake Decision Sciences. After the system was made production-ready and put to use, a general improvement was noted by mill operations personnel. For example, trims seemed tighter, product changes were easier, grade runs were longer, parent roll inventory levels decreased, and the ability to meet required delivery times improved.