Import PlanMateAPS to improve on-time delivery rate

It has become a consensus that the APS system can help customers improve on-time delivery rates. There are many main factors for delivery delays. In the manual production scheduling method, due to the limitation of calculation amount, it is impossible to make long-term plans and estimate the delivery date, which is the main reason for delivery delays. The powerful computing power of the APS system can conduct delivery assessments when receiving orders, reply to customers with an accurate delivery date, and avoid making unrealizable delivery promises. When production capacity is tight, you can also communicate with customers in advance about a mutually agreed upon delivery time.

The promised delivery date is inaccurate

When receiving business orders, it is a problem for many companies to be unable to give customers accurate delivery dates. Every business person has experienced delivery promises that have not been accurately calculated, but cannot be fulfilled when the time is approaching, and various reasons are found for postponement. Many companies will conduct order delivery review.
Order delivery review refers to judging whether the order can be delivered on the date required by the customer when the business receives an order. The following conditions need to be met for the order to be completed and delivered on time:

• Whether the workshop capacity is met. Will there be spare capacity to complete production before the delivery date required by the customer without affecting the delivery of other committed orders?
• If a customer order requires a long procurement lead time, are the materials available to meet production?

Many companies use the order-holding method to conduct delivery review. Orders that have been formally received occupy production capacity time, and the unoccupied time is freed for future review. This approach seems reasonable, but is very difficult to implement in practice.

• The production process of each product is different, the required production time and the equipment allowed to be used are different, so it is very difficult to manually calculate the occupancy.
• Based on the above reasons, the actual occupancy calculation generally only considers the overall production capacity and does not go down to the equipment level. However, this calculation is inaccurate. Even if the overall production capacity is met, it is possible that the production capacity of individual equipment cannot meet demand.

Therefore, manual delivery review is often inaccurate. To completely solve the problem, we need the help of APS.

In PlanMateAPS, we divide work plans into long-term plans and short-term schedules. Long-term planning can be used to predict the delivery of customer orders

• PlanMateAPS can formulate more accurate long-term plans based on limited resources, evaluate delivery dates, and give customers accurate delivery dates to avoid making unachievable promises and provide reasonable and achievable delivery dates.
• Set different priorities for orders. For orders that have officially responded to the customer’s delivery date, the original commitment date of the order will be maintained when the order is re-evaluated. The delivery date will be recalculated based on resources for newly received review orders.
• Communicate with customers in a timely manner when production capacity is insufficient and delivery may be delayed. Many customers will accept delivery date changes provided they provide advance notice.
• While reviewing the order delivery date, resource demand analysis can be conducted at the same time, so preparations can be made in advance, such as customizing mold fixtures, recruiting employees, etc.

Material issues:

Lack of materials is an important factor leading to order delays. Many companies’ material analysis can only be calculated clearly a few days before production, and they completely ignore whether there are materials for orders a week later, which will inevitably cause orders to be delayed due to lack of materials.
After importing APS, the material shortage list of all future orders can be calculated in advance, purchase orders can be replenished in a timely manner, and supplier delivery can be continuously tracked, instead of waiting until production is close to discover the material shortage.

• PlanMateAPS uses in-stock and in-transit inventory as material constraints
• Based on the BOM and inventory, calculate the material collection date of each task, arrange the task after the material collection time, and generate a work order material shortage list to early determine which orders have material shortage problems

Of course, the system cannot solve all problems in the supply chain, but accurate prediction, early detection of problems, more stable delivery times for suppliers, and continuous tracking can solve most of our problems.

If there is a shortage of materials calculated 2 months in advance, is it still called a shortage of materials?

Production planning issues:

Various abnormalities often occur in workshop production. The following are common scenarios.

• The equipment is broken and needs 1 day to repair.
• The production of line A is delayed, and all subsequent orders will be postponed. Line B is over production, so subsequent orders must be advanced.
• The mold needs to be sent for maintenance and cannot be used within 2 days.
• Customer A has modified the quantity of the order, and customer B wants to modify the delivery time.
• A certain product needs to be reworked, which will take several hours.

When these situations occur, can the company immediately determine which order is affected? Which order will be delayed? Do you need to work overtime? How long do you have to work overtime? Which line needs to work overtime to ensure delivery?
In manual scheduling, the above exceptions put planners in an emergency firefighting state, making it difficult to immediately rearrange a new version of the plan.

In the Gantt chart of PlanMateAPS, the impact is immediately apparent, and planners can take immediate action to eliminate the impact and ensure delivery by moving tasks to other equipment, adjusting sequences, adding overtime, etc. If there are many conflicts and it is difficult to modify manually, you can also rearrange the system to quickly get a new version of the plan.