MES for Industry 4.0

Advanced Planning and Scheduling

APS gains agility with MES

The Critical Manufacturing MES collects process data that is now instantaneously available to an embedded Scheduling module. This functionality of detecting events and issues as they arise both on and off the shop-floor enables the system to create an optimum or near optimum schedule, and keep that schedule up-to-date as the situation changes.

For Industry 4.0 applications, integrated scheduling in MES must be able to handle IIoT data from CPS and CPPS, to manage the on-the-fly changes that might occur. Ensuring scheduling is truly dynamic and fully integrated into the manufacturing operations flow will be essential to success with Industry 4.0. » Read more about Industry 4.0, IIoT, CPS and CPPS

Critical Manufacturing MES with integrated Scheduling provides you with:

Ability to quickly submit acceptable and satisfactory scheduling scenarios;
Ability to cope efficiently with problems characterized by a large number of restrictions and with a high number of operations, to provide good solutions in time to be effective;
Advanced mechanisms to quantitatively evaluate the quality of the solutions;
Multi-criteria schedule optimization;
Capacity to improve overall indicators (such as minimizing preparation time or maximizing energy efficiency) and simultaneously deal with local optimizations, (i.e. in each work center).
»» See what's new in Critical Manufacturing MES!

The integration of Manufacturing Execution System (MES) and Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) functionalities, together with an experience of planners, make the scheduling activity more fruitful. Either one of them - when employed separately - is still useful, but they provide true value when put in action together, as the integration enables the team to:

Avoid Master Data duplication;
Always consider the real-time status of the shop floor in the schedule;
Include all planned shop-floor activities managed by other MES modules;
Use scheduling or dispatching in different areas of the shop floor;
Eliminate the need to maintain an interface between the MES and scheduling.

Integrated Scheduling - How it works

With Scheduling natively integrated into the Critical Manufacturing MES your facility can improve on-time performance, make realistic order promises, optimize for mix and volatility and gain agility to respond to the market.

GENERATE MASTER DATA
1. Define the factory model
2. Load the orders/materials and equipment

GENERATE SCHEDULE
1. Define the optimization criteria
2. Generate schedule

FINE TUNE SCHEDULE
1. View generated schedule
2. Make manual adjustments
3. Optionally, regenerate schedule
4. Release schedule

EXECUTE THE SCHEDULE
1. Each resource will be configured to use dispatch lists or scheduling information


Scheduling Algorithm

Optimization multi-criteria


The scheduling of production orders is recognized as a critical process in production activities, as it may involve significant costs or benefits. It is therefore a "structured" problem, that encompasses product routing and tracking according to the characteristics and capabilities of the resources, but on the other hand, presenting enormous difficulties associated with the existence of multiple and conflicting goals, many times of a qualitative nature.

Scheduling is a buffer between demand and production. It enables effective use of plant resources by implementing the production plan driven by customer demand. It determines what each resource should do to fulfill a certain mix of orders in a near-term time frame.

Scheduling is based on two fundamental ideas:

to value the work of the planner and schedule production orders, taking into consideration
a multi-criteria logic,

to enable the improvement of the existing solutions.

The goal of scheduling is to improve on-time delivery, shorten total cycle time, and make a better use of resources.

Key benefits of scheduling include:
  • Increased utilization of resources » improvement in productivity
  • Synchronization of orders with an achievable schedule » reduction of inventory levels
  • Decrease of WIP that slows down production flow » reduction of makespan
  • Increased on-time deliveries » improvement in customer service
  • Better plan of financial resources accordingly to labor and resource use » improvement in cost control

Scheduling optimizes operations execution and management for a period of hours to a few weeks. It ensures that the very short-term dispatching of orders is based on optimum loading of each resource at that time.

It does not replace other tools for tactical (mid term) and strategic (long term) planning, e.g. demand forecasting, supply chain management, resource and materials management.

FREQUENT DELAYS
    - recurrent difficulties in meeting delivery dates promised
    - difficulty in responding to queries and meet deadlines
    - difficulty in determining and ensuring reliable delivery times
FREQUENT CHANGES TO THE PRODUCTION PLAN (in reaction to delays)
HIGH WORK-IN-PROGRESS (WIP)
    - large number of production orders on the shop floor
    - high volume of materials and WIP
PRODUCT MIX SEQUENCING PROBLEMS
    - long queues (especially in the critical resources)
    - frequent need for extra hours
    - subcontracting need to address the lack of capacity problems

New White Paper:

APS Goes Native for Industry 4.0. Why Advanced Planning and Scheduling Must be an MES Capability
by Iyno Advisors & Critical Manufacturing

For Industry 4.0 to have its full impact, advanced production planning and scheduling (APS) must be native to the manufacturing execution system (MES). Why? To optimize outcomes for the high-mix, constantly changing, automated Industry 4.0 environment.

Only when APS is built into the MES can companies rely on it being fast, accurate and efficient enough to do that.

Download

See also:

Scheduling 101
Can Scheduling work outside the MES?
Scheduling is an NP-Hard problem
Optimization multi-criteria: brain of APS
As APS solutions evolve, will planners still be needed?

Scheduling-Infographic

View the INFOGRAPHIC