Pinnacle Coatings & Sealants

Pinnacle Coatings & Sealants manufactured architectural and industrial coating products across three production lines in their Ohio facility. Orders were managed in an ERP with no integration into production scheduling — the ERP knew what was ordered; the plant floor operated on a weekly whiteboard meeting and a printed schedule that was outdated the moment it left the conference room.

WIP visibility required physical floor walks. Supervisors had no way to know line status without walking to each line, and production managers depended on shift-end reports that were often two to four hours stale by the time they reached a decision-maker.

When Pinnacle brought a third production line online, the planning complexity increased faster than the team could absorb manually. Unplanned production stoppages driven by material availability issues — a raw material lot not available when scheduled — were occurring roughly nine times per month across the three lines. Customer shipment delay notifications were reactive: the plant would discover a delay was happening, then manually call or email customers after the fact.

Pinnacle deployed five MFX modules across a six-month rollout, prioritizing planning and visibility in phase one, customer communication in phase two.

PPM replaced the whiteboard-and-printout scheduling workflow with a live production plan that builds against real inventory balances. Material availability is validated at schedule-build time, not at run time — the system flags lot availability conflicts before an order reaches the floor. INV gave the planning team a real-time inventory view across all three lines, with the running balance updated automatically by production completions and receiving events.

DASH replaced floor walks with a live production dashboard visible to supervisors and production management — current line status, production rates, and WIP positions updated in real time without manual input. LM built a continuous lot genealogy, enabling the team to trace any finished goods lot to its raw material inputs in seconds.

CNCS automated customer shipment notifications. When a shipment is scheduled, adjusted, or delayed, the relevant customer contacts are notified automatically based on configurable rules — the plant no longer has to discover a delay and then decide who to call.

Production throughput increased 22% across all three lines in the twelve months following full deployment. The improvement is attributed to the elimination of unplanned stoppages — from approximately nine per month to fewer than four — and the recovery of production time previously lost to schedule uncertainty and manual planning reconciliation.

Pinnacle absorbed the third production line without adding a production planner. WIP visibility became real-time; supervisors no longer walk the floor to get a status picture. Customer delay notifications are now automated — proactive rather than reactive — which measurably reduced customer escalations in the first quarter after deployment.