Mastering Job Shop Scheduling: Pillar Innovations’ Success Story

About Pillar Innovations

Based in Grantsville, MD, Pillar Innovations is a turnkey industrial contractor serving sectors from oil & gas to mining and manufacturing. Their services range from automation and electrical solutions to custom machine building and IoT integration. Pillar is known for delivering high-quality systems and long-term support that keeps customers coming back.

The Challenge: Job shop scheduling without the right tools

Like many manufacturers, Pillar Innovations faced daily challenges when it came to production scheduling. Their homemade system - spreadsheets and manual task entry - made it very difficult to plan with confidence. Tasks weren’t connected, recurring jobs had to be entered repeatedly by hand, and there was no clear way to visualize workloads, spot bottlenecks, or prevent overbooked machines. Delivery dates were a constant source of stress, and teams often found themselves out of sync.

However, customized software that could map and implement their complex scheduling requirements was very time-consuming to develop and therefore also very expensive.

The Turning Point: Discovering just plan it

Everything changed when Pillar’s team discovered just plan it (jpi) from Boyum IT at a trade fair. A short demo showed a solution built for the realities of job shop scheduling, capable of handling complex projects with multiple resources and dependencies. Joseph Caldrone, Director of Fabrication and Machining, recalls:

This software, and having Dave Luckner if I get in a jam, has really made production scheduling much easier and much more accurate.

How Boyum helped Pillar Innovations

Planning resources and forecasting schedules to accurately meet delivery deadlines was one of Pillar Innovations’ biggest hurdles. With jpi, the team can now determine production capacity much more precisely, enabling them to provide realistic delivery dates. This has improved communication with customers, ensuring transparency regarding whether a job is on schedule, and enhanced planning for future orders, thereby strengthening their negotiating position. Additionally, jpi has improved internal collaboration by giving all departments access to real-time updates on order progress. Overall, the team now benefits from easy access to resource scheduling, both labor and equipment, and can quickly add or adjust jobs as needed.

What are the main benefits they achieved by using Boyum IT

• Automated production scheduling: With jpi, Pillar Innovations has replaced manual, fragmented scheduling with a transparent and data-driven approach.
  
  
• Increased on-time delivery: Finite capacity scheduling allows the team to accurately schedule around available resources, resulting in dependable delivery timelines.
  
  
• Transparency in the production process: The Gantt chart offers a clear, real-time overview of orders, operations, resources, and due dates. It helps uncover hidden capacity, highlights bottlenecks, and significantly improves operational control.
  
  
• Improved external and internal communication: Real-time access to scheduling data empowers both sales and production teams to stay aligned and informed throughout each project’s lifecycle while customers are informed promptly about order status, ensuring transparency and strengthening trust.

Pillar Innovation is supported by their trusted partner, Production Priorities, who provided expert guidance and implementation of just plan it.