PlanetTogether is the logical extension of nearly 50 years of academic and industry focus on production scheduling systems. The Cornell University professors, Dr. William Maxwell and Dr. Richard Conway, who wrote the industry-leading book Theory of Scheduling, mentored PlanetTogether’s co-founder, Jim Cerra, through his master’s degree at Cornell right through the creation of their company C-WAY Systems Inc., a breakthrough developer of production planning and scheduling systems. C-WAY was later acquired by Epicor Software where PlanetTogether co-founder Larry Hargis came into the story as the lead developer of the newly acquired APS product line.
Known as the “fathers of scheduling,” Maxwell and Conway taught their protégées every aspect of production scheduling, and put them in the trenches with real, hardcore planners and schedulers. Like the professors, Jim and Larry were scheduling fanatics—nothing pleased them more than tackling scheduling problems no one else could solve.
By 2004, the team launched PlanetTogether on the Microsoft .NET architecture – the first and only .Net APS system. Word got out. A handful of progressive manufacturers, both process and discrete wanted the software to replace the anemic scheduling tools in their ERP systems. Out of the gate, nothing compared to Galaxy’s functionality.
TeamPlanet combines the fresh, quick-to-learn energy of engineering graduates with the experience of supply chain and manufacturing planning vets — all with a new way at looking at planning problems, evolving technology, and client success.
New Day. Smarter Way.
Today, PlanetTogether’s Galaxy APS is the contender to beat in the arena of manufacturing production scheduling. Galaxy is a collaborative, multi-plant platform with virtually unlimited functionality, muscling out those 98-pound weaklings called “ERP scheduling modules”, and trouncing on those stacks of impossible-to-maintain spreadsheets. With PlanetTogether’s unique combination of education, research, leading technology and experience your company’s valuable resources will be in good hands. It’s a new day. And a smarter way.
Special Thanks
Working closely with Dr. Maxwell (“Max”) and Dr. Conway (“Dick”) for more than ten years and in hundreds of manufacturing sites around the world provided the academic and real-world understanding of the challenges manufacturing schedulers face and an understanding of how to model and solve these problems with computers.
We are immeasurably grateful for the mentorship, vision, ethical guidance and good humor that Max and Dick shared with us as they pursued their passion for scheduling throughout our years together. We are excited to carry on their life’s work as we pursue their original vision of solving the world’s toughest scheduling challenges, together with our clients.
