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Four Steps to Implementing AI in Production Planning and Scheduling

Qlector Research (Jun–Sep 2025)Qlector interviewed several of Slovenia’s largest, high-performing manufacturing companies between June and September this year. We wanted to understand their day-to-day approach to production planning, what the real challenges are, how they are solved, and what they intend to invest in next. The results are relevant to plant and operations leaders responsible […]

How Leading Manufacturers Plan Production: 50% Still Depend on Excel and Paper

Qlector Research (Jun–Sep 2025)Qlector interviewed several of Slovenia’s largest, high-performing manufacturing companies between June and September this year. We wanted to understand their day-to-day approach to production planning, what the real challenges are, how they are solved, and what they intend to invest in next. The results are relevant to plant and operations leaders responsible […]

How AI Is Quietly Revolutionizing Downtime Management in Manufacturing

Downtime is one of the most expensive and stubborn challenges in modern manufacturing. But unlike traditional methods for production planning and scheduling, new industrial AI-based solutions are not fighting it with guesswork. By leveraging Machine Learning and Digital Twin technologies through advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems, manufacturers are now able to simulate thousands of […]

The ‘Reality Gap’ – A Silent Killer of Your Manufacturing Operations

An hour of unplanned downtime can cost up to $2.3 million for large manufacturing companies operating in the automotive sector. For small and medium-sized enterprises, the cost can reach $150,000 per hour. These staggering figures underscore the critical importance of addressing the Reality Gap – the disconnect between production plans and actual shop floor operations. […]

AI Agents Are Coming to the Shop Floor – Here’s Why It Matters

Have you wondered what’s next in production planning? While AI continues to dominate the conversation, two terms are quickly rising: AI Agents and Agentic Workflows. In this blog, we’ll explain them in simple terms—what they are, how they work on the shop floor, and why they matter to you. If you’re still juggling multiple systems […]

What Production Planners Need to Know About LLMs, Machine Learning, and AI Agents

AI is a hot topic in manufacturing, but it’s easy to get lost in the buzzwords or even easier to wonder, ‘What’s in it for me?’ Although many production planners have likely experimented with ChatGPT or similar tools powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), they often aren’t sure how this kind of technology can be […]

No data, no AI: Key Learnings from Smart Manufacturing Forum 2025

Have you ever wondered what AI projects in manufacturing really look like? If you’ve been involved in AI projects on the shop floor, you know that getting quality data ready takes a lot of time. In fact, only about 10 – 20% of the project goes into building the model, while the remaining 80 – […]

Insights from Qlector Leap Customer Satisfaction Survey

At Qlector, our mission is to empower manufacturing companies with smarter, AI-powered production planning, scheduling and optimization. To ensure we continuously meet our user expectations, we conducted a Customer Satisfaction Survey in December 2024. Here’s a summary of the key insights we gathered. Who Participated? We invited 353 active users of Qlector Leap, both in […]

Shop Floor in 2025: What Awaits Us This Year

Challenges evolve as technology evolves. Once dominated by manual labor and repetitive tasks, today’s shop floors are rapidly turning into innovation hubs. The main driver? Advanced tech, embraced across the entire industry. To stay competitive and relevant, we must adapt and carefully decide where to invest our resources. Although big-picture trends—like supply chain risks, sustainability, […]

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With QLECTOR LEAP, we have digitally mapped every process within our company, revolutionizing our operations. This allows us to swiftly and efficiently formulate our production plan, complete with auxiliary workstations. The true game-changer lies in the plan's automatic updates. Simultaneously, all subsidiary processes remain informed of any modifications

By bidding farewell to a multitude of Excel files once essential for production planning, we not only declutter but also reclaim valuable time. The era of manual updates is now behind us.
I wholeheartedly recommend Qlector Leap to those who have yet to establish a systematic production planning system and still rely on Microsoft programs. The tediousness of handling such files and their susceptibility to errors can now become a thing of the past

Domen Škrbina

Head of Production Logistics at Kovis

Kovis is an internationally innovative company for the development and production of high-quality components for the railway industry and various parts for other industrial sectors. The company has established itself internationally with the production of brake discs for all types of railway vehicles: from locomotives, trams, and metro lines to high-speed trains. In addition to the brake discs, Kovis is also the largest manufacturer of axle boxes for freight wagons in Europe.
Kovis turns good ideas into a safe and sustainable future.

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QLECTOR LEAP has enabled significant progress in production plan optimization, as it learns from historical data, optimizes the plan, and provides more optimal suggestions for planners and production.

The most useful functionalities include real-time inventory overview, scheduling of workers and tool changes, and a user-friendly experience for planners, who receive a Gantt chart and a real-time overview of weekly realization. Any changes made to the plan in SAP by the planner are immediately visible in LEAP, allowing us to see when we will have reconfigurations and reduces tool change time.
The condition for using QLECTOR LEAP is well-organized data. With this condition met, LEAP operates with great precision, which is why I would recommend it to other manufacturing companies.

Marija Golja

Production Planner at Kolektor

Kolektor is a global supplier that boasts a tradition of highly specialized industrial production. In almost 60 years of experience, the company became a global provider of mobility components and systems and has added programs outside the automotive industry in the process of diversification and globalization and has spread to other continents.
Kolektor is a synonym for credibility, trust, quality, and innovative products and services. The programs are managed in three strategic groups: Kolektor Mobility, Kolektor Technologies, and Kolektor Construction.

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Qlector's software optimizes production planning in a simple, intuitive way and opens up new optimization options in a simple form thanks to the AI algorithms and various evaluations and reports. A must for modern production

Ingo Hild

Plant Manager at ams OSRAM Group

ams OSRAM is a global leader in innovative light and sensor solutions, building on over a century of experience. Combining engineering expertise with global manufacturing, the company delivers groundbreaking applications that make the world safer, smarter, and more sustainable. Specializing in high-quality semiconductor-based light emitters, sensors, and software, ams OSRAM continues to push the boundaries in illumination, visualization, and sensing across diverse industries.

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QLECTOR LEAP has enabled the automation of planners' work, faster response to changes in production planning, and management of a larger number of machines.

The results are currently evident in shorter inventory lead times for binding unfinished production and semi-finished goods, where we observe a 10% improvement. I would also highlight the expertise and agility of the Qlector team in terms of understanding and adapting to our production planning peculiarities. Domel follows modern trends in digitization, which is why QLECTOR LEAP seamlessly integrates into the ERP and MES system and is certainly one of the AI integrated APS solutions worth exploring.

Matjaž Roblek

Supply Chain Director at Domel

Domel is a global development supplier of electric motors, vacuum motors, blowers, and components. The company was founded in 1964 and has production facilities in Slovenia, Serbia and China. Their motors power over 300 million appliances in premium and consumer markets worldwide. Domel’s business processes employ high levels of technology, automation and robotisation, which form a basis for building competitiveness and excellence.