Advanced Production Scheduling – Getting More From...

DoreenBaseler · ‎2013 Aug 13

Time is money, and schedules manage that time. That’s why production scheduling throughout your operation, and including your supply chain, is a critical, valuable management duty. Today for you to explore:

SAP Advanced Production Scheduling rapid-deployment solution
Key take away: Optimize your production execution with detailed planning and scheduling functionality in SAP APO. Learn about this solution, its business values and check where to find further information about this pre-packaged offering.
Do you face issues with determining the optimal order sequence for your production execution? Do you suffer from suboptimal production plans that incur never-ending backlogs of important production orders? Do you lack notifications of resource overloads and subsequent delays in the production execution? Do you miss transparency in planning results and capacity of resources? Would you like to meet delivery commitments based on actual constraints on the shop floor?
SAP Advanced Production Scheduling rapid-deployment solution (RDS) helps to address these issues. By combining the best of SAP ERP initial planning with SAP APO advanced or detailed planning, you can address those major pain points, quickly with this RDS.
Based on initial planning results, transferred from your SAP ERP system to SAP, this solution makes it possible for you to use the detailed scheduling in SAP APO to deliver optimized order sequences for production execution. This includes the scheduling for the sequence of planned orders and the maintenance of available capacity.
The manner in which you plan schedules is flexible in this solution. You can plan in a manual way, using graphical or tabular approaches, such as the detailed scheduling planning board or the resource planning table. What-if simulations and evaluations of orders sequences support you with flexibility and control. Alternatively, you can use an automated production planning run to determine optimal schedules - using either heuristics-based scheduling or the constrained-based optimization method for order sequence optimization. The choice is yours.
This RDS lets you combine manual and automated planning processes, too.
When your plan is performing in line with your schedule, the world seems right. In the real world, with continuously changing market and business conditions along a supply chain, schedules can be threatened with every passing hour. This RDS contains monitoring and alert functionality as shown in the following graphic.

SAP Advanced Production Scheduling rapid-deployment solution – process flow covered

The alert monitoring functionality immediately indicates critical scheduling situations. You will also get support when you need to adjust schedules, manually or automatically. Just set your parameters during the planning stage. After successful detailed planning, the system transfers the optimized planning results back to your SAP ERP system, and provides the foundation upon which you can now initiate production execution.
Implementing this rapid-deployment solution in only 11 weeks, you combine the advantage of using the most-required detailed scheduling functionality [PP/DS] while leveraging the investments you made in your SAP ERP production planning system.
Some key figures how this rapid-deployment solution may bring value to your business*:
Using MTO (make to order) manufacturing models, which integrate delivery dates with material availability and real-time manufacturing conditions, such as machine and labor capacity, you can expect a 12 % higher production plan adherence.
Plant on-time delivery may rise by an average of 5 % when production plans are pegged to actual sales demand.
If you generate a concurrent material and capacity constraint plan multiple times in a day, you have on average 30% lower revenue loss due to stock-outs: Planned orders in ERP which are updated with more detailed planning results from SAP APO scheduling result in more accurate planning. More planning accuracy in scheduling naturally translates to optimized order execution, improved order fulfillment and eventually reduced number of stock-outs.
Performing detailed scheduling multiple times in a day, you can expect an average 32% lower overall supply chain planning cost: improved order sequence combined with optimal resource utilization, alert monitoring to directly handle critical planning situations, and what-if simulations to decide for the best production execution plan – all this can be achieved through sophisticated SAP APO planning software.
* Note on Methodology: Performance metrics represent a comparison of results from companies that have high adoption of process-related best practices vs. companies that do not. Source: SAP Manufacturing Benchmarking Survey, covering more than 100 companies across 20 industries.

Find further information on this solution:

In SAP Solution Explorer: http://rapid.sap.com/se
Supply Chain Management -> Solutions -> Demand Driven Supply Chain -> Manufacturing and Supply Planning -> SAP Advanced Production Scheduling rapid-deployment solution

In SAP Service Marketplace:
http://service.sap.com/rds-aps (requires dedicated authorization)

Planning and scheduling provide substantial savings that can raise the profitability of your organization. Next, we will dive into the topic of delivery. Part 6 of this series will deal with SAP Global Available-to-Promise (ATP) Check rapid-deployment solution, ensuring product delivery in the time and quantity desired by your customers.

Missed the other parts of the blog series? Find them here: