Delivery reliability raised from 50% to as high as 98%

KJH-Comp Oy, founded in 2009, is a sheet-metal mechanics pioneer based in Alahärmä, Finland. The company is a pure contract manufacturer, building welded steel structures and fully assembled, tested products for its customers. Everything runs under one roof, from laser cutting and tube laser through bending, welding, and assembly. Production fills a 6,800 m² facility staffed by 76 professionals, and quality is backed by ISO 9001 certification and a Suomen Vahvimmat Platinum rating. As a subcontractor, KJH-Comp has to keep its promises to the day: orders land on a specific delivery date, and the range of work keeps growing.

When weekly planning hit its limit

KJH-Comp planned production with its C9000 ERP and spreadsheets. The load was coarse and weekly: how much welding was due in the coming week, and where capacity was free. But orders fall on a specific day, not a week, so day-level finite-capacity scheduling stayed a manual job on the shop floor. A supervisor tracked delivery dates and assigned jobs to machines by hand. As the number of items and drawings grew sharply, that approach reached its limit. Two supervisors each spent at least half their time on capacity scheduling, and delivery reliability sat at around 50%.

Targeting the real need

KJH-Comp also weighed replacing its ERP. From the company’s point of view, that option would have been a major investment, and it would not have solved the finite capacity scheduling challenge without further configuration. SkyPlanner offered a focused answer to exactly that need. KJH-Comp and SkyPlanner’s makers already shared more than 15 years of cooperation, and a post-costing program built by the same partner is still in daily use, so the trust was already there.

The rollout was phased. SkyPlanner ran alongside existing processes from September 2023 to the following April, expanding the whole time around KJH-Comp’s own priorities. Both parties took an active part in the development meetings, and KJH-Comp ranked the features by importance. Practice showed what was needed next, and new capabilities were still being built after full use began.

AI takes over the scheduling

Day-to-day planning kept its familiar shape: orders are still entered in the same ERP as before. The big change is on the shop floor. SkyPlanner’s AI handles finite capacity scheduling and assigns each job to the right machine automatically. The pre-welding collection step is especially valuable: SkyPlanner checks that every part for a job, including purchased parts, is ready before the job enters the work queue. That readiness used to be checked by hand. Welding work is matched to the right skills. The C9000 integration keeps orders and production on a single source of truth. In practice, every workstation has a tablet that opens and zooms the drawings. Earlier the drawings were read on paper, which caused real challenges, since even A3 sheets were too small for detailed work.

Delivery reliability on a new level

The clearest result is in delivery reliability. Where it used to be around 50%, in 2026 KJH-Comp delivers up to 98% of its work on time. The scheduling workload halved at the same time: the job that once took two supervisors now needs one, and the other has moved to different tasks. Sharp growth in the product range has been absorbed without a matching increase in staff.

SkyPlanner also makes capacity bottlenecks visible. When the load on the four-metre bending machine climbs past capacity, for example, the supervisor sees it immediately in the work queue and can react in time. Right-time production removed unnecessary early work: a job due in two weeks no longer takes the place of one shipping tomorrow. In bending, SkyPlanner sequences jobs that use the same tooling and material thickness back to back, which shortens setup times and cuts idle time.

SkyPlanner plays a decisive role in maintaining our delivery reliability.

Hannu Lahtinen · Managing Director, KJH-Comp Oy

Reported results

• Delivery reliability up from around 50% to as high as 98%
• Scheduling workload halved — from two supervisors to one
• A sharply growing product range absorbed without adding staff
• Capacity bottlenecks visible in real time in the work queue
• Shorter setups and less idle time through smarter bending sequences

Built to grow

Staff took to the system more smoothly than expected, and that reception has made later features easier to adopt. KJH-Comp’s delivery reliability has reached a level that would have been hard to achieve on the old model. At the same time, supervisors spend less time on daily loading and more on developing production. As a sheet-metal mechanics pioneer, KJH-Comp can grow its volumes without the planning workload rising in step.