5IMPORTANT FACTS ABOUT PARTNERING

WITH PREACTOR

Preactor’s strength is in its Partner Network. Becoming part of that Network makes your company stronger too.

PROVEN PRODUCT

Preactor is not a new product. It has the largest installed base of any independent scheduling software company in the world. A wealth of sales and marketing collateral is available and SAGE standardise on Preactor for its applications in Sage 50, 200, 500 and 1000.

GROWING MARKET

The planning and scheduling software market is growing. AMR predict a 13% compound growth rate for Manufacturing Operations IT over the next 5 years.

EASY TO DEMONSTRATE

Pre-Sales staff can be trained to give competent and compel-ling demonstrations to potential buyers. Technical staff can be trained to customise the software for each client starting with a number of application templates.

NO FRANCHISE FEE

There is no franchise or annual fee involved in becoming a Preactor Partner. Software is provided for demonstration and development of applications.

SERVICES REVENUES

Preactor International does not require Partners to contribute any of their service revenues. Partners retain ownership of their accounts; all invoicing is direct to the Partner.

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ASSEMBLY CONTROLLER The Graphical Planner has functionality equiva-lent to Preactor 100 FCS. It has automatic forward, backward and bi-directional scheduling using finite constraints and an interactive drag and drop Gantt chart.

The Graphical Planner uses the Manufacturing Controller’s Start and End dates for each manufac-turing order to synchronise assembly processes. The Start and End dates are calculated during the BoM explosion, and whilst they are adequate in simple assembly processes, in more complex situations it is possible for an assembly to be sched-uled before its component parts are available.

The Assembly Controller addresses this problem by physically pegging together the orders using the BoM data provided by the Manufacturing Controller.

In this Graphical Planner schedule the black wheel assembly operation has been delayed by the yellow operation causing the blue bike assembly to be started before the wheels are complete.

ASSEMBLY CONTROLLER UPGRADE

SAGE GRAPHICAL PLANNERThe Graphical Planner for Sage 50 Manufacturing Controller and Sage 200 is 'Powered by Preactor'. Preactor is unique in the scheduling software world in that it comes in different ‘flavours’ or versions each having a different set of features and functionality. This means that you can easily upgrade your client’s Sage 50 or 200 Graphical Planner to one of the other Preactor solutions if you need the additional features available.

This leaflet provides information on the additional features available by upgrading to the Preactor Assembly Controller or a standard Preactor version and how you as a distributor can benefit from these upgrades.

In the second screen shown below the Assembly Controller has pegged the orders together and the pegging is indicated by the dotted arrows (solid arrows are operation relationships within an order). The pegging information has enabled the Assembly Controller to make sure that the bike assembly (blue) does not start until the wheels (black) are complete.

As well as pegging manufacturing orders together the Assembly Controller can also import the current stock levels of components and the purchase orders for bought in items and peg to these as well. The purchase orders are both firm and recommended so you can see immediately how the availability of bought in items is affecting the ability to deliver.

Stock components can also either be bought in items or ones that are manufactured in house.

Sage Graphical Planner ®®Powered by Preactor

3OF OUR PARTNER

TESTIMONIALS

QUINN & ASSOCIATES

"There is no question that scheduling can be a complex issue, and those complexities will change from industry to industry. The thrill with Preactor is that here is a tool that can solve some many more complex problems with a single, not verticalized, application, and a reseller who learns the product can free their creativity to solve problems that cannot be solved by any other scheduling application. Software capabil-ity, competitive advantages to outdistance the competition, and the excitement knowing the software is dynamic and not some dull plug-and-play module. There's nothing like it in the marketplace. Software can be fun."

Greg Quinn, CEO, Quinn & Associates

SCHEDULING SOLUTIONS

“Partnering with Preactor is not only profitable, it allows you to develop great solutions with significant customer returns.”

Chris Mollison, CEO, Scheduling Solutions

RMS

There simply is no other software scheduling system out there that gives you the ability to deliver a first class, highly beneficial tailored scheduling solution. Preactor’s family of products allows us to pitch the solution at almost any size of business and budget. Rest assured though, those that are careful and have a limited initial budget soon come back for more. We should know, we have customers who’ve been using Preactor and our services for over 10 years!

Warren Roberts, CEO, RMS

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The Graphical Planner is a single constraint sched-uler. This means that for your primary resources (typically your machines) it will ensure that each resource is only expected to process one task at a time, but it does not constrain the usage of secondary resources such as operators and tooling. This can be a problem if you have, say, ten machines but only seven operators so three machines will always be idle.

In this environment the Graphical Planner will warn you that you are overloading your secondary resources, but you will have to rectify the situation by manually adjusting the schedule. The Assembly Controller is a multiple constraint scheduler, so it will automatically ensure that you do not overload your secondary resources. In the ten machine example it will only load seven machines at any point in time.

The Graphical Planner (above) has overloaded (red area on the graph) the operator secondary constraint. Manual adjustment will be required to resolve this problem.

The Assembly Controller (above) automatically ensures that no more than the two operators that are available are used.

The Assembly Controller can also access a range of optimisation rules for more advanced scheduling applications such as preferred sequencing and minimising changeover time.

The Preactor Assembly Controller is designed for fast deployment by relatively inexperienced staff. Its ‘plug and play’ capabilities mean that upgrading from the Sage Graphical Planner to the Assembly Controller is simple. A two day training course is normally sufficient to give end users enough knowledge for every-day use.

WHO CAN SELL THE ASSEMBLY CONTROLLER?To be able to sell the upgrade a Sage distributor must become a Preactor Partner. Our business model is based primarily on channel selling. More than 90% of Preactor systems are sold through the channel with 3rd parties such as ERP vendors, SFDC, MES and other software distributors, consultancies and system implementers. There is no fee involved in becoming a Preactor Partner and technical and sales training as well as demonstration/development software are provided.

FULL PREACTOR UPGRADEWhere the user wants to add additional fields to the Graphical Planner or Assembly Controller, we offer an upgrade to full versions of Preactor. Customising Preactor to the customer’s requirements requires additional training and takes longer to deploy. This work can be sub-contracted to Preactor International if the Partner desires, which would attract a finders fee for that Partner.

COMPENSATION STRUCTUREPartners obtain revenue as a Preactor Partner through discounts on the software licenses, annual maintenance, finders fees and through services provided for their clients in terms of customisation and integration. Only accredited Partners are allowed to customise and install Preactor.

Partners can have one of a number of states:-

- Business Associate- Reseller- Solution Provider- Silver Solution Provider- Gold Solution Provider

The percentage discount is then calculated on the status of the Partner and sales perfor-mance during the previous 12 months.

All partners start as Business Associates. After one or more members of staff have been trained on the product they can then become a Reseller. Resellers can become Solution Providers after additional training and completion of a minimum number of satisfac-tory implementations. Silver Solution Provid-ers must provide telephone support within normal office hours and have completed additional implementations. Gold Solution Providers have completed at least 15 imple-mentations.

Compensation for maintenance and mainte-nance renewals is again dealt with through a discount or in the case where a customer orders directly from Preactor International, a credit equal to the discount. All Agreements are non-exclusive and have to be renewed every 12 months.

CONTACT DETAILS

Preactor International LtdCornbrash Park Bumpers Way ChippenhamWiltshireUnited KingdomSN14 6RA

Tel: +44 (0) 1249 650316Web: www.preactor.comEmail: sales@preactor.com

Preactor is a registered trademark of Preactor International. Sage is a registered trademark of Sage Group PLC.