Components within Advanced Planning and Scheduling Software
The five components of advanced planning and scheduling software (APS) include:- Demand Planning – Demand forecasting is the process of predicting what the demand for certain products will be in the future. It identifies what both current and future customers will want to buy and tells manufacturing facilities what they should actually produce. Demand forecasting is conducted through the analysis of historical sales data, statistical forecasts, client intent surveys, and more. Demand planning is an integral component of manufacturing operations that wish to properly produce the correct amount of products without increasing inventory cost and creating excess waste.
- Production Planning – Production planning is the process in which a manufacturing operation ensures that raw materials, staff, and other resources within the operation are prepared to create finished products according to a specified schedule. A production plan can serve as a guide for a company’s production activities and establishes a sequence of activities that must be carried out in order to achieve a production target. Production planning can be challenging as it must account for the availability of raw materials, resource capacity, and actual or forecasted demand.
- Production Scheduling – This component is the process of arranging, controlling, and optimizing work within a production process. The scheduling component builds from the demand and the production plan to generate a schedule that production is able to carry out. The benefits of an advanced production scheduling system include inventory reduction, reduced product changeover time, reduced scheduling effort, and labor load leveling. Production scheduling is an extremely important component within the production facility but it can be challenging to manually generate an efficient, optimized, and accurate production schedule.
- Distribution Planning – Distribution planning is the method that is utilized for planning orders within a supply chain. This component is based on a demand forecast to calculate the inventory requirements for various time-frames. Distribution planning coordinates the demand for a future period with the on-hand inventory and the safety stock requirements for the period. Overall, this component carries out how much inventory of each material or part is needed to achieve high order-fulfillment status.
- Transportation Planning – Transportation planning is defined as the planning and management processes required to transport people and goods throughout the supply chain. This process is a collaborative effort that looks to identify the transportation needs of a facility and assess the efficiency, cost, and design of the transportation model. Transportation planning also involves defining future policies, goals, investments, and designs to adequately prepare for any future transportation needs.
Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) Software
Advanced Planning and Scheduling Softwares have become a must for modern-day manufacturing operations as customer demand for increased product assortment, fast delivery, and downward cost pressures become prevalent. These systems help planners save time while providing greater agility in updating ever-changing priorities, production schedules, and inventory plans. APS Systems can be quickly integrated with an ERP/MRP software to fill the gaps where these systems lack planning and scheduling flexibility, accuracy, and efficiency. With PlanetTogether APS you can:- Create optimized schedules that balance production efficiency and delivery performance
- Maximize throughput on bottleneck resources to increase revenue
- Synchronize supply with demand to reduce inventories
- Provide company-wide visibility to resource capacity
- Enable scenario data-driven decision making
Originally Posted by PlanetTogether: https://www.planettogether.com/blog/5-coponents-of-advanced-planning-and-scheduling-software