The techniques of the past used to plan production are now unsuitable for the needs of today’s production companies, as well as for the companies that want to be the protagonists of tomorrow. Companies that still use these methods in fact have difficulty reacting promptly to changes and their communication, both internal and external, is hampered by the presence of “silos”. There is therefore a need for a new approach to production scheduling so that we have the information available first and act faster.
Concurrent planning
Concurrent planning, which uses simulation to choose the best production plan, is the most sought-after solution to solve these needs as it offers the possibility of planning, monitoring and responding to changes in a single shared environment. It therefore gives the ability to detect critical issues and respond almost in real time, to make prudent decisions, on many teams and departments.
Concurrent planning is actually a typical reasoning of our intellect, which combines the analytical and structured part of the right hemisphere with the purely intuitive, emotional and collaborative part of the left side to imagine and predict. For companies, it is therefore important to be able to equip themselves in time with technologies that allow them to carry out similar calculations and reasoning.
The 5 benefits of concurrent planning
Below are the 5 advantages of this recent planning technique:
- Uninterrupted – Eliminates downtime and delays caused by manual scheduling.
- Real-time KPIs – Allows you to keep performance indices up to date and under control, to have a projection of future performance.
- Having visibility into the future, through simulation – Allows you to verify the consequences of certain actions and changes to the production plan, allowing each user to test the hypotheses, validate the results and then share the potential results with other colleagues and departments, to solve a common problem. What-if analysis and simulations of future scenarios allow you to identify and choose the best plan.
- Sharing data with a single platform – One of the biggest barriers companies around the world have is a lack of information sharing. If the right information is not available, it is impossible to better manage production and correct the route, optimising the company’s performance and profitability. Planners need access to past, present, and future data, structured or unstructured, from across the supply chain.
- Make the best decisions, before it’s too late – Specific solutions for production planning, thanks to data on the entire supply chain, quick and specific analyses, KPIs and customised windows allow you to make effective decisions quickly. Solutions such as the CyberPlan APS then allow advanced processing that takes a few minutes unlike crude ERP analyses that take hours. It is logical that tools born with a different purpose cannot compete in terms of production planning.
These are 5 reasons why a manufacturing company today should seriously consider the idea of equipping itself with software for production planning and not wait to be overtaken by the competition. Find out how you can help your business evolve and use concurrent planning, click here!
