Let's face it. You have a fixed production capacity at your disposal. You have a fixed list of suppliers with fixed quantities of raw material supplies. Your production processes have almost a fixed rate of production. You have a very limited option when it comes to your product mix. You are also constrained with poor profitability due to high production and inventory costs. And yet you are beset with orders which require a lot of set changes on your work centers, different routing for each order, short delivery lead times, different priorities for orders, etc. In such a situation, a big question mark is chasing you: how to plan your production to survive in such a scenario?
The master production scheduling (MPS) component of the software is the one which does most of the work. It makes the schedules with the orders in hand against capacities and constraints. Once you are able to accurately calculate how much of the WIP materials are required to fulfill orders for finished products, an accurate time requirement can be calculated. Without this information, your schedule will always be wrong. Adding the time required to produce all WIP materials along the production route (process routing) will give you the total lead time needed to produce a certain quantity of the finished product.
It is the MPS part of the software—which may also be called APS, FCP, or APO, all of them work on the same principle but the degree to which they may succeed varies. Here the name of the software is not important but what it can do is what you should look for. Different vendors use different conventions in naming their product—which handles your constraints and comes up with good schedule to reduce your costs by grouping and sequencing orders against manufacturing activities. It should do this efficiently so that you need less lead time, less inventory, less labor, and fewer other resource requirements.
So how is a customer going to decide which vendor to approach for the solution? Because of the lack of standards and a plethora of names for the same kind of software which essentially does the same thing, manufacturers get confused as to which solution will be a fit for their needs. Fortunately, there are some guidelines available which can help.
The keywords here are dynamic and finite planning and scheduling with the ability to handle all your generic and specific manufacturing constraints. Not all master production scheduling software is the same. Some of them may be good for a certain industry like primary metals, whereas some other vendors may have MPS software, which is good for other industries like food. Again, some MPS systems may not be up to mark. Some vendors may have big claims, which in reality may only be partly true. On the other hand, there are small vendors who provide really good solutions. Knowing what to look for will help you find the most appropriate solution for your manufacturing set up.
The master production scheduling (MPS) component of the software is the one which does most of the work. It makes the schedules with the orders in hand against capacities and constraints. Once you are able to accurately calculate how much of the WIP materials are required to fulfill orders for finished products, an accurate time requirement can be calculated. Without this information, your schedule will always be wrong. Adding the time required to produce all WIP materials along the production route (process routing) will give you the total lead time needed to produce a certain quantity of the finished product.
It is the MPS part of the software—which may also be called APS, FCP, or APO, all of them work on the same principle but the degree to which they may succeed varies. Here the name of the software is not important but what it can do is what you should look for. Different vendors use different conventions in naming their product—which handles your constraints and comes up with good schedule to reduce your costs by grouping and sequencing orders against manufacturing activities. It should do this efficiently so that you need less lead time, less inventory, less labor, and fewer other resource requirements.
So how is a customer going to decide which vendor to approach for the solution? Because of the lack of standards and a plethora of names for the same kind of software which essentially does the same thing, manufacturers get confused as to which solution will be a fit for their needs. Fortunately, there are some guidelines available which can help.
The keywords here are dynamic and finite planning and scheduling with the ability to handle all your generic and specific manufacturing constraints. Not all master production scheduling software is the same. Some of them may be good for a certain industry like primary metals, whereas some other vendors may have MPS software, which is good for other industries like food. Again, some MPS systems may not be up to mark. Some vendors may have big claims, which in reality may only be partly true. On the other hand, there are small vendors who provide really good solutions. Knowing what to look for will help you find the most appropriate solution for your manufacturing set up.
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