A long-time manufacturer in the railroad signal systems industry came to us with a familiar challenge: planning production capacity across multiple jobs with limited visibility. They specialize in custom-engineered hardware and field-ready tools, which makes precise scheduling and resource allocation critical. But their process was still heavily manual, and that made it hard to adapt quickly or optimize weekly workloads.
Navigating an ERP Transition
The company was transitioning from Sage 50 to Sage 300. While Sage 300 is a solid system for accounting and operations, it doesn’t come with a full-scale manufacturing module. To bridge that gap, we helped implement Manufacturing by AutoSimply, a third-party add-on that integrates directly with Sage 300 and runs on the same SQL database. That integration was key, because it opened the door for tailored development.
Where the System Fell Short
AutoSimply brought a lot of manufacturing power to the table, but it didn’t include any tools for capacity planning. There was no way to easily see available resources or the production load across work centers. For a team juggling multiple jobs at once, that missing piece made it tough to schedule accurately or avoid bottlenecks.
Designing the Right Solution
To solve that, we built a custom desktop app using the same SQL backend that powers Sage 300 and AutoSimply. The goal was to give production leads a clear, real-time view of jobs and available capacity across the entire shop floor.
The app pulls live data from work center and resource tables and loads it into an intuitive planning interface. Users can filter by year, week, job, or status, making it simple to track current workloads and spot gaps. It even includes built-in logic to auto-generate future capacity records, populating weekly slots for the full year based on work center and resource pairings.
When schedules shift, users can easily adjust planned hours (QTYFTE) right in the grid and save changes directly to the database with one click.
A Smarter, Smoother Workflow
The result is a tool that eliminates guesswork and replaces spreadsheets with real-time data. The team can now plan ahead with confidence, respond faster to changes, and avoid overloading key resources. It’s a streamlined system that saves hours of manual scheduling every week and keeps production running smoothly.
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