The customers of ADD*ONE Simultaneous Planning requested a concrete sequence planning in addition to the existing weekly planning, which closes the gap between planning and control. INFORM fulfilled this wish with the new detailed planning component including a graphical planning board.
"User-friendliness was a central development goal here", says Dr. Adrian Bock, Inventory & Supply Chain business unit. "We wanted to provide the planner with a tool that not only gives an overview of production but also supports him in his decisions when manual rescheduling is required".
The correct order
The detailed planning component calculates the optimum sequence of operations, taking into account setup times and costs as well as work shifts and break times. The planner receives this sequence schedule in the form of an interactive, graphical planning board. If changes occur at short notice, such as the failure of a machine or an unexpected shortage of material, work processes can be quickly and easily moved to other machines or to a later date using drag & drop. As Dr. Adrian Bock explains:
"Short-term changes occur in every planning process, so it was very important for us to develop a planning board that provides an overview, allows changes to be made easily and - very importantly - provides decision support for the planner".
