How Advanced Planning and ERP Scheduling (APS) Transforms your Manufacturing Environment?
You are at a busy airport but are amused to see how every flight, baggage check, and passenger transition is smooth, perfect and without any hiccups.
And, you wonder how to bring this level of synchronization in your manufacturing plant. The answer is an Advanced Planning and ERP Scheduling (APS). APS ensures flawless task execution, optimizes resources, and meets delivery schedules with precision.
Surprising! Isn’t it? After all, most manufacturers struggle to match that perfect synchronization for timey deliveries with high level of resource optimization.
This newsletter will highlight how the APS can be a real game changer for manufacturers and how does it perform the miracle. Dive in to know and explore this invincible tool, popularly known as Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) Software.
What is APS?
Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software optimizes production and supply chain operations by creating efficient schedules, balancing resource allocation, and forecasting demand
It takes into consideration various factors such as capacity constraints, raw materials availability, order priorities, and customer demand to create production plans that can be executed efficiently.
With the help of this, manufacturers can tackle various challenges like unexpected fluctuation in demands, raw material requirement, collision of two batches, etc.
APS oversees numerous aspects of production like:
APS has a significant role in manufacturing. Its innate capabilities help manufacturers to tackle their various challenges. ?Let us discuss these capabilities and see how they help for timely, flawless, and synchronized production.
Rescheduling capability-
Many a times, manufacturers have to reschedule their batches. It can be due to change in demand, raw material scarcity, or early shipment needs of orders. APS helps manufacturers to reschedule their batches to meet the requirement.
Schedule Intermittent cleaning, maintenance, etc. -
Without APS, accommodating changeovers, maintenance, and cleaning between schedules must be done manually, which is time-consuming, prone to errors, and risks being overlooked, potentially leading to issues like cross-contamination between products from different batches.
For example, if two consecutive batches include an allergen and a non-allergen product, scheduling them back-to-back without adequate cleaning time can result in contamination of the second batch. APS dynamically adjusts schedules to incorporate necessary cleaning tasks without disrupting production, ensuring that each batch is handled with the required care and preventing contamination.
Production scheduling-
Production scheduling determines the feasible scheduling of batches. With the help of production scheduling, one can associate a batch with specific work centre or machine. It facilitates decision of what products need to be produced, at what time, on what lines, and in what quantities.
Production scheduling generates a schedule in accordance with process cell capacity.
The software has option to select start and end date of production orders and user can easily shift it by simply dragging the graphical block along the timeline. This feature makes it very easy to understand and use.?
Scheduling-
APS has amazing capability to determine start date and finished date before initiating a batch production. This capability is known as Scheduling. It has two types:
Forward Scheduling-
When you select forward scheduling, the system dynamically calculates the exact date and time when the production will get over.? This scheduling is helpful for make-to-stock kind of production as the delivery date is not fixed.
Backward Scheduling-
When delivery date is fixed, the system calculates the date on which the production must start to complete on given date. This kind of production is generally used for make -to-delivery kind of scenario.
In both the cases, production gets completed in due course of time, so that it can be delivered as per the schedule. The capability helps in timely deliveries which increases customer satisfaction, and hence, the brand loyalty.?
Split order-
The amazing feature of APS helps manufacturers to split MPS orders into different separate orders. These split orders can be executed according to logistic perspective. There are multiple situations where split orders can be useful for manufacturers. Some of these are like:
For any of the reasons above, the split order helps manufacturers to provide meticulous solution and keeps production going.
Colourful Dashboard-
One of the key features of APS is its colourful dashboard. You can assign color-codes to batches according to their status viz- new planed, firm planned, uploaded, cancelled, or deleted. The colour coding increases production visibility and enhances convenience in handling various batches. ???
Shipment Viewer-
Although shipment viewer is a part of delivery and not manufacturing but still we are covering it here because manufacturing without delivery is sheer waste of time, resources, energy and money.
Shipment viewer is your go to feature when you want to have a bird eye view of all the shipments pending. You can see the shipment pending month-wise / week-wise or day-wise. This feature helps you to strategize shipment for faster delivery which will eventually impact positively on customer satisfaction.
If some shipments are getting delayed, you can drill down to find out the reason, and inform customers about the delay, well in advance.
These are some of the main features and capabilities of an Advanced Planning and ERP Scheduling (ERP) Software which can revolutionize manufacturing environment.
Final thought:
An APS software can be really very helpful for manufacturing. But until it is connected with an ERP system, it cannot yield desired results.
Not all manufacturing ERP software are capable enough to integrate APS. Only a few with wide functionalities can do that.? BatchMaster ERP is one such manufacturing ERP.
Not only the ERP has wide domain of functionalities, but the parent company BatchMaster Software Pvt Ltd offers an APS add-on which goes very well with the ERP.
If you are a manufacturing organization, considering to deploy ERP and also looking for an APS software, mail us on [email protected] and explore the benefits you can reap with this competent duo- BatchMaster ERP and APS add-on.
Meanwhile, don’t forget to visit our website BatchMaster for more information.
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