FJ Industries: Achieving Production Control with Proficy Scheduler

FJ Industries A/S is a manufacturer of high precision metal components for industrial applications. Established in 1943, the company produces casted and machined metal components as well as powder metal products for customers worldwide. Each solution is tailor made to customer requirements, supporting both small and medium sized production series.

At FJ Industries, production planning was originally handled through a combination of Excel and, later, the company’s ERP system. However, as operational complexity increased, it became clear that this setup was no longer sustainable, and neither approach provided the level of flexibility or responsiveness required. The limitations of the existing setup became more visible over time. While the ERP system was introduced to improve structure and control, it proved too rigid for detailed production planning. Instead of creating clarity, it often led to friction between systems, conflicting data, and a significant amount of manual coordination across the organization.

“When I joined the company, planning was still largely driven by a foreman using spreadsheets and Gantt charts. It quickly became obvious to me that this was not sustainable if we wanted to improve as a business. We were constantly reacting rather than planning, and a lot of time was spent manually updating information instead of making actual planning decisions. There was no single, reliable view of production, which meant that every change required discussion, interpretation, and coordination across several people just to understand what was actually feasible. We tried to use the ERP system more actively for planning, but it simply wasn’t agile enough. It created too many manual workarounds and too much time spent reconciling information instead of planning.” Henrik Frandsen, Production Planner, FJ Industries A/S.

FJ Industries gradually came to the realization that their existing planning setup was no longer fit for purpose if the company wanted to remain competitive. What had once been sufficient for managing production was increasingly showing its limitations as complexity and demands grew. It became clear that something needed to change to support more structured and responsive planning.

At the same time, this realization did not immediately lead to full agreement within the organization. While there was growing recognition that the current approach had its limits, there was also a degree of skepticism about whether a dedicated planning tool would be the right answer. Some stakeholders questioned whether their production was too complex or too unique for standard planning tools to make a real difference.

This perception is, in fact, very common across manufacturing companies. Many organizations tend to view their production as highly specific and fundamentally different from others, which often leads to hesitation when evaluating dedicated systems. The underlying question is therefore not only whether the system can support their processes, but also whether their perceived uniqueness is truly a barrier or whether it reflects complexity that is, in practice, structurally like challenges seen in many other production environments.

“There was some skepticism in the beginning. Some felt that our production was too special and unique to fit into a standard planning system. But as we started exploring dedicated scheduling solutions such as Proficy Scheduler, that perception slowly began to change. What initially seemed like a limitation of systems turned out to be a limitation of our existing planning approach. It became clear that the issue was not that our production was too complex. It was that our planning systems were too limited,” Henrik explains.

FJ Industries ultimately selected Proficy Scheduler to improve visibility, flexibility, and responsiveness in production planning to support the growing complexity of the business.

The implementation process was characterized by close collaboration with our experienced production planning and manufacturing specialists. Rather than focusing solely on software functionality, the implementation centered on understanding FJ Industries’ operational reality and translating it into a planning setup that reflected actual production constraints, workflows, and priorities.

“This combination of domain expertise and hands-on implementation support was essential in creating internal confidence and ensuring that the solution became both practical and highly relevant for day-to-day operations. By aligning the planning setup with our actual production constraints, workflows, and business priorities, the implementation delivered a solution that supports greater visibility, flexibility, and responsiveness across our production planning processes,” Henrik explains.

What particularly stood out to the team at FJ Industries was the system’s visual planning environment and the ability to analyze production from multiple perspectives depending on operational needs. Compared to their previous setup, this provided significantly greater visibility and made it easier to understand the impact of changes, bottlenecks, and shifting priorities across production.

Over time, one of the most valuable improvements proved to be the ability to connect planning directly to real operational constraints and transform production data into actionable planning decisions. A concrete example was the development of a simple visibility indicator showing whether specific tooling was available or not. This made it possible to immediately identify which production orders were feasible and which would be blocked due to missing tooling or resource dependencies.

By combining production orders, tooling availability, and resource dependencies within the same planning environment, FJ Industries gained a level of operational insight that had not previously been possible in their ERP setup. The system enabled planners to clearly understand:

• which tools were available
• when they would be needed
• and how this affected overall production feasibility

At the same time, the implementation also revealed weaknesses in existing planning assumptions, data structures, and operational processes. Rather than seeing this as a limitation, FJ Industries viewed it as an important advantage of working with a dedicated scheduling system.

“What makes the difference is not only what the system shows, but what it exposes,” Henrik explains. “It quickly became clear where we had gaps in data, inconsistencies in planning logic, or dependencies that had previously been handled informally. In many ways, the system forces you to become more structured and that has been extremely valuable for us.”

The increased transparency has not only improved planning quality but also created greater organizational awareness around how production data, workflows, and operational dependencies interact across the factory. The result has been several internal improvement initiatives aimed at strengthening the overall planning foundation and creating more robust operational processes going forward.

Today, FJ Industries’ focus is less about introducing advanced new functionality and more about embedding Proficy Scheduler deeper into the organization. This includes expanding usage across additional production areas, strengthening tooling and maintenance coordination, and improving the connection between production orders, resources, and operational constraints.

For FJ Industries, the objective is no longer simply better scheduling. The ambition is to create a more holistic and data-driven planning environment capable of supporting increasingly complex manufacturing operations.

“If you want to move beyond basic planning and truly use production data as a decision-making foundation, you need a system that reflects operational reality. For us, Proficy Scheduler has not only improved visibility, but it has also fundamentally changed the way we understand and work with production planning,” Henrik says.