How many times do you find yourself spending hours or even days waiting for data transfers, analyses, simulations, MRP laps? Today you can accomplish all of these things in a fraction of the time you’ve spent so far. All you need is the right advanced production planning and scheduling software that allows you to do the same things but better and in much less time.
Maximum speed for the production planning and scheduling process
The production planning and scheduling process must synchronize data, people and processes to achieve operational and financial performance objectives.
The speed of data processing and the creation of different scenarios must support you in making the best decisions to pursue your goals. The speed of processing is therefore a fundamental element to try different scenarios making the process interactive, but also to manage unforeseen events having under control the impacts of decisions.
Tools without processes and people are just tools. But if your company has the right people, equipping them with advanced tools will allow them to make better and faster decisions, greatly increasing business performance.
You will know sooner if something has gone wrong in your supply chain, and you will be able to act faster to correct it, reducing decision latency and improving operational and financial performance. Equally important, it will allow you to spend less time managing the problems and urgencies of your supply chain and more time enjoying life.
Advanced tools for high-performance planning
The tools that allow you to speed up your production planning and scheduling skills are Advanced Planning & Scheduling software (APS). These software connect directly to the company management system that they use as a data resource, allowing data to be processed in real time, transforming it into useful information, considering all company constraints. The plan processing cycles last a few seconds with full visibility of the impacts in the various departments and on the KPIs such as resource saturation, service level, set-up times, efficiency, and many others.
Learn more about what an APS is by reading our dedicated article: “Whatis an APS?”
5 benefits of advanced production planning tools:
- Processing the plan in a few seconds: you can process, simulate, modify the plan in a few seconds;
- Visibility and improvement of operations performance: the simulations take into account all company constraints both in terms of capacity and materials and draw up a feasible plan;
- Easy alignment of operations with the business: Thanks to the visibility and performance of production planning you can focus on increasing performance also from a financial/business point of view: improve service level, increase inventory turnover, balance inventory, increase resource efficiency;
- Elimination of silos and information asymmetries: with these tools you will no longer need to use Excel or Project sheets for your activities, and you will centralize the data within the ERP. In this way, everyone will work on the same data and with the same information, breaking down the barriers of the famous “business silos” and information asymmetries;
- Focus on the highest value activities: by reducing the time to plan, search for data, request information by up to 90%, you can now use your time only for the highest value activities, leading your company to increase its competitiveness compared to competitors.
Learn how to speed up your production planning process
If you too want to find out how to make the process of planning, scheduling and scheduling production fast and efficient, then you might be interested in the article How to speed up the production planning process.