How AFM Plans Up to 94% Faster with Harumi
Overview
Acearia Frederico Missner (AFM), a leading company in custom-made iron and steel parts, faced a challenge common to many industrial operations: planning daily production while handling unforeseen events quickly and minimizing machine and workforce idle time.
Planning was empirical, heavily dependent on employees’ experience and constant adjustments. With Harumi’s arrival, this scenario changed. The process became standardized, automated, and driven by real data on capacity, setups, and demand. The operation gained predictability, efficiency, and cross-department alignment—reducing rework and significantly increasing adherence to the production plan.
The numbers speak for themselves. Harumi led to a 23% increase in production plan adherence, 38% reduction in late jobs, 11% reduction in total setup time and 94% reduction in planning time.
About AFM
Founded in 1971, Acearia Frederico Missner built its reputation on customized cast parts for markets demanding high precision and technical rigor.
Operating exclusively on a make-to-order basis, AFM requires a highly disciplined operation with tight control and predictability across all stages. This combination of technical complexity, demand variability, and reliability requirements makes AFM an ideal setting for advanced planning to deliver immediate impact.
Harumi arrived to convert this deep technical expertise into best-in-class operational efficiency by integrating data, reducing uncertainty, and supporting strategic decisions.
Despite this expertise, daily planning was previously uncertain, relying heavily on the production planning analyst’s experience and ad hoc decisions throughout the day.
Unsystematic
An empirical process built on individual experience;
Manual
1.5 hours per day spent solely on manually assembling planning spreadsheets in Excel;
Suboptimal
A strategy of keeping the same mold in production for consecutive days to reduce machine changeovers and ease operators’ work, but without any mathematical optimization logic;
Disorganized setups, increasing lost time and rework;
Unpredictable
Frequent daily plan adjustments due to employee absences, equipment failures, and rework: low plan adherence (around 45%), with no clear understanding of the causes;
Uncoordinated
Decentralized decision-making, with operators defining production only on days without bottlenecks or operational issues;
Undiagnosed
Hidden bottlenecks, especially in the core-making area, impacting molding without clear diagnosis;
Siloed
Fragmented communication, leading to reactive and misaligned decisions.
The Solution
Through its partnership with Harumi, AFM underwent a structural change in its planning process. Planning shifted from an empirical approach to an automated, data-driven one, enabling:
Structured, repeatable planning, reducing reliance on individual experience;
A 23% increase in production plan adherence with Harumi’s solution, driving greater operational stability;
Optimized automatic sequencing, integrating capacity, setups, and due dates;
Full transparency of machine loads, enabling forecasts and scenario simulations;
Automatic identification of bottlenecks previously hidden in the process;
Reduced rework and unnecessary tooling changes (setups), improving operational efficiency;
Stronger alignment across departments, supported by clear, data-based communication;
A drastic reduction in daily planning time from 1.5 hours to just 5 minutes, freeing the team for strategic activities.
Harumi did not replace AFM’s technical knowledge—it amplified it, transforming accumulated experience into scalable efficiency.
Direct impact on the operation’s bottleneck
At the plant’s most critical resource—where every minute sets the pace for the entire factory—Harumi delivered:
–38% in delays, freeing up production flow;
–11% in setups, increasing bottleneck availability.
This focus on the constraint led to effective reductions in queues and overall lead time.
More stable and achievable plans
With optimized, feasible sequencing from the outset, AFM saw a significant increase in adherence to production plans, replacing constant adjustments with a far more stable and predictable operation.
Data-driven decisions instead of urgency-driven actions
Full visibility into machine loads and bottlenecks made it possible to anticipate issues, simulate scenarios, and act proactively—reducing rework and reactive decisions throughout the day.
Productivity gains in planning
Time previously spent manually building spreadsheets and making adjustments was drastically reduced, enabling the team to focus on strategic analysis, scenario evaluation, and continuous improvement.
Results
Numbers can show how Harumi affected AFM's production line
-38%
Reduction in late jobs.
AFM significantly increased the number of orders delivered on time.
-11%
Reduction in total setup time.
In practice, this meant more output with the same resources, without additional investment.
-94%
Reduction in planning time.
No manual planning spreadsheets.
In summary, Harumi enabled AFM to transform an empirical planning process into an optimized, automated, results-driven one, delivering:
Fewer delays;
Less downtime due to setups;
Greater predictability;
Higher productivity;
Greater confidence to scale and grow.
The partnership established production planning as a strategic lever for operational efficiency, capable of supporting AFM’s technical complexity with world-class performance.
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