Inside the real workflow of a production planner managing 47 machine work centers, customer commitments, bottlenecks, and production capacity.
As featured in Modern Machine Shop
15%
Reduction in production delays
Days → Seconds
Scheduling time
1 Week → 1 Year
Planning horizon
Real-Time
Schedule updates
Marcus Crockett, Production Planner at Three Sigma Manufacturing, walks through his daily 5:00 AM scheduling routine and explains how his team uses Skody to identify bottlenecks, evaluate capacity, and stay ahead of production issues.
Three Sigma Manufacturing, Inc. is a precision manufacturing company based in Kent, Washington serving aerospace, defense, and industrial customers. Like many high-mix manufacturers, the company faced increasing planning complexity as demand, machine utilization, labor constraints, and customer expectations continued to grow.
"My stress level as the scheduler at Three Sigma since we've gotten Skody has way gone down."
Marcus Crockett
Production Planner, Three Sigma Manufacturing
"I can quickly find out if I can or can't ship something early. It takes me seconds to get there."
Marcus Crockett
Production Planner, Three Sigma Manufacturing
Every morning begins with a fresh view of current factory conditions. Rather than managing yesterday's schedule, Three Sigma evaluates today's reality and adjusts accordingly.
5:00 AM
Review new jobs added overnight
5:05 AM
Compute a fresh production plan
5:10 AM
Review Delivery Map and customer commitments
5:15 AM
Identify bottlenecks and at-risk orders
5:30 AM
Move resources and communicate priorities
According to Marcus, the Delivery Map is the most valuable screen in the platform because it immediately shows where delivery performance is trending and where future problems are developing.
A live view of every customer commitment. Planners instantly see which orders are trending late and which are safe.
Lead time decomposed into production work, material waits, and bottleneck delays — so planners know where to act.
Capacity across 47 machine work centers mapped against current demand so planners can rebalance load before it becomes a problem.
From one week to one year
Answer delivery questions in seconds
Identify constraints before shipments are missed
Greater visibility into future production risks
Less time reacting and more time planning
A schedule planners can trust
47
The full shop is modeled, not just a subset of machines or departments.
1 Week → 1 Year
Planners can see a full year ahead without locking the shop into a frozen schedule.
~99%
The planner accepts the computed baseline about 99% of days rather than rebuilding it.
4 Weeks
Production managers took a week off and the floor kept running, because the plan was visible four weeks out.
"Our people are able to use it readily. The bigger reason is probably that they like to use it. It makes their job easier. I've got several people here now who, if we said we're getting rid of Skody, they'd be very unhappy."
Ken Frenkel
CEO, Three Sigma Manufacturing
"Once you have a production schedule, everything else comes from that. Do you make your delivery date? What does revenue look like? You know delivery dates and you know your customers' terms, so now you know cash flow. Fundamentally, the production schedule is the independent variable. Everything else is a dependent variable."
Ken Frenkel
CEO, Three Sigma Manufacturing
Most scheduling systems create a plan from a static snapshot. The problem is that the snapshot becomes outdated the moment production changes.
Skody reads the current state of production and recalculates the schedule — on demand, on a significant ERP change, or continuously where wired — based on what is actually happening on the floor.
The result is a schedule planners can trust.
Skody recalculates schedules on demand, on a significant ERP change, or continuously where wired, using live production data, labor availability, machine capacity, and material readiness. Excel schedules must typically be updated manually.
Yes. Material readiness is treated as a scheduling constraint and is included in planning calculations.
Yes. When conditions change, Skody recalculates the affected portion of the schedule and highlights delivery impact.
Skody does not assume every order can be delivered on time. When demand exceeds available capacity, Skody shows which jobs will slip, identifies the constraints causing delays, and allows planners to evaluate staffing, overtime, outsourcing, or sequencing changes before committing to customers.
Most customers begin seeing value within weeks, not months.
We'll use your actual jobs, machines, routing data, and constraints to show how Skody would schedule your operation.