How Alumasc Simplified Production Scheduling, Increased Transparency, and Reduced Errors

06.11.2025

Alumasc Water Management Solutions (AWMS), part of Alumasc Group in UK, is the first joined-up brand in integrated water management. For almost 90 years they have been promoting the efficient use, retention, recycling, and disposal of water.

Among its subsidiaries are Wade and GATIC, which operate two manufacturing sites in Halstead and Dover respectively. They manufacture high-capacity drainage products, involving multiple manufacturing stages such as laser cutting, pressing, and assembly.

Complex manufacturing poses significant planning challenges

Approximately 90% of their business operates on a make-to-order basis. Communicating and meeting delivery times are crucial for Alumasc. This, on the one hand, requires precise production scheduling. On the other hand, constantly varying demand, and the need to squeeze in short-term orders also requires a very flexible scheduling process.

Alumasc WMS used Microsoft Dynamics NAV as its ERP System.

Homemade solution did not meet the requirements

Production scheduling were done by Excel spreadsheets, which was “a method prone to human error and data gaps”, as Mark Woodward, Business Systems Manager at the Halstead site, puts it.

This cumbersome and error-prone way of working could not keep up anymore with the modern and sophisticated production processes in the company and clearly required a new scheduling and planning method.

Since switching to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central in 2020 at the GATIC site in Dover, Gary Browning, Business Unit Manager, was “quite keen to have a visual planning tool to drag and drop things.”

Must-haves of production scheduling software

The production scheduling software should be able to:

• integrate with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and facilitate working with it
• provide an overview of their production orders in relation to their sales orders, as their focus is on make-to-order manufacturing
• present the production schedule in a clearly arranged view
• easily detect errors
• allow for easy and quick changes to the schedule either automatically or manually

Their Microsoft Dynamics partner, Tecman, recommended the Visual Advanced Production Scheduler (today is named Schedule (VAPS)) and soon they were convinced by the powerful features and options of the product.

Realistic delivery time commitments with VAPS

After the VAPS demo, Alumasc WMS’s Managing Director immediately realized the impact that automatic finite capacity scheduling could have on making realistic delivery time commitments and keeping the schedule current.

Having used the VAPS for some time now, the Dover team can report significant changes and improvements.

Benefits of the VAPS:

• Better integration with Dynamics 365 Business Central: the VAPS makes working with Business Central easier by providing a visual and accurate live view of production data and demand. In addition to this, unlike in Excel, changes made in the scheduling tool directly update the production orders in Business Central. That way, scheduling and ERP have become integrated, and no longer separate tools.
• Streamlined order management: the VAPS enabled the Dover site to schedule, visualize, and adjust orders more efficiently, reducing the reliance on complex spreadsheets.
• Error detection: the wide range of tools, like the comprehensive finite capacity scheduling instruments, helps detect bottlenecks, spot errors in the data and gives the ability to quickly address them.
• Different color modes, e.g., Item View, Production Order View, Shopfloor Status View, etc. let the planner see data through different perspectives.

Gary Browning is pleased that 

“the VAPS made planning significantly easier compared to our previous use of spreadsheets. The visual nature of the tool allowed for quicker and more intuitive adjustments, eliminating the need for extensive copying, and pasting. With the VAPS, we can confirm delivery times to our customers with much more precision than before.”

Beneficial collaboration with NETRONIC

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