Frequently Asked Questions

Our biggest competition is Excel. Many companies produce a bucketed master production schedule in SAP or other ERP systems, and attempt to detail schedule it in Excel using complex macro enabled spreadsheets or algorithms. This approach quickly becomes complicated, difficult to maintain, and out of step with the reality of the manufacturing floor.

Phenix manages complexity seamlessly by using powerful algorithms to identify the optimal scheduling. It provides a holistic view of scheduling, empowering planners and schedulers to make good trade-off decisions to meet their business objectives, no matter what they are. Find out more.

Customer success is our first priority. We have a world-class team of experts with over 475+ years of experience in the supply chain industry who have put their minds together to create a solution that will transform production strategy and execution in manufacturing. We’re eager to help you get ahead of the competition! 

With master data pre-requisites met, our team of consultants can implement Product Wheels and Phenix in as little as two to four weeks. Depending on size, complexity, and pace at which you want to run, two to four months is typically required for projects that include full scheduling design and implementation.

Absolutely! Training is factored into our implementation to ensure you have the knowledge and confidence to leverage Phenix software on your own. Approximately 30 hours of training is provided in total. Training starts early in the project so the team can assist with data prep and loading, and Wheel design. We also work with schedulers during the transition to Wheel scheduling which makes for a fast ramp–up in confidence and capabilities. And the cherry on top: documentation and training resources are always available to existing customers to refresh skills and help onboard new team members.

With the transition from previous practices and inventories to the optimized design, it can a little bit of time after implementation to realize the benefits. Typically, customers will begin to see the benefits after one complete set of cycles, and fully realize the benefits after approximately three complete sets of cycles. To provide a bit more context, if you have a 1–week fundamental wheel time, and four unique cycles to catch all of the low volume products, then a complete set of cycles would be four weeks.

Phenix product support is available through a ticketing system with a response time guarantee based on business priority and time of day. We respond to most tickets within an hour. Phone support is available for extremely urgent cases. We will never leave you hanging!

Phenix recognizes that the privacy of your data is critical. The software is hosted on a secure AWS data-center in the US and uses industry standard security practices including end-to-end encryption of data in transit and at rest. Phenix performs periodic code-level security audits and continuous automatic vulnerability scans. A role-based access control system is used and an audit log is available that shows if a Phenix customer support user has viewed your organization. Contact us for more information on our Security and Privacy procedures.

We are always learning from our customers. Conversations with future and existing customers provide invalueable insight, feedback, and input into additional features for Phenix to consider incorporating into the Software in the future. We’d love to hear from you. Contact us to share your ideas and learn more about our vision and the features we have lined up in the pipeline.

Most definitely. Spokes are built into the Wheel for new product runs and test runs. Phenix can help the scheduler decide where to place the new product so it is most like its neighbors. Phenix makes it easy and quick for you to add and remove products from the Wheel and visualize the impact on capacity, and thus make better decisions.

We provide an inventory ramp up/ ramp down plan in advance of stepping into the Wheel patterns so each SKU can come close to being right–sized for Wheel operation. To the extent that plan can’t be completed due to very limited capacity, the early Wheel patterns won’t be followed perfectly and will have to be deviated from frequently, but you will eventually settle in to the desired patterns. Operating performance will be better than it would have been without Wheel scheduling during and after the transition.