ERP is the information management system for the entire enterprise. The enterprise’s operations, finance, production, sales, etc. all run under ERP. ERP has limited functions in production scheduling and cannot meet the detailed scheduling needs of enterprises. As an independent production planning module, APS becomes a supplement to ERP.

The production scheduling system solves the problem of detailed production planning at the workshop equipment level, but APS cannot run independently of ERP. When implementing APS, it needs to share data with ERP.

The data APS needs to obtain from ERP includes:

1. Work orders: Many companies issue work orders based on customer needs and manage production based on work orders. The PlanMateAPS system schedules work orders based on work orders, which are the most basic scheduling data.

2. Demand: that is, the customer’s order, including information on what product, quantity, and when it needs to be delivered. Demand is not necessary data, APS can schedule based on work orders only. Demand data is required when:

  • When opening a work order, one work order includes multiple requirements, or one requirement opens multiple work orders.
  • When scheduling, you may need to preprocess work orders according to the required delivery date, split or merge production, adjust the delivery date, etc. This part is usually performed before automatic scheduling and is a customized part. Note: Some companies do not open work orders and produce directly according to orders. PlanMate can create work orders from orders.

3.Inventory: Inventory includes materials, semi-finished products and finished products. Whether to use inventory is based on the following considerations:

  • Manufactured goods inventory: Companies that produce according to demand, or companies that automatically create inventory orders, deduct inventory first when customers demand it, and then schedule production when it is insufficient. Note: If ERP has completed the work of deducting inventory, APS does not need to use the inventory of manufactured goods.
  • Purchased item inventory: If material condition constraints need to be considered in scheduling, the inventory of purchased items needs to be imported from ERP. Companies that frequently suffer from material shortages should use inventory constraint scheduling to reduce temporary plan changes caused by material shortages.
  • To use material condition constraints, the BOM of purchased materials needs to be defined in the model.

4. Material release list: A list of materials that have been released for work orders. This data table only needs to be used when 2 and 3 are used at the same time. When deducting inventory, the part that has been issued needs to be subtracted.

After obtaining the scheduling data, APS automatically schedules according to the customer’s model. The data obtained after automatic scheduling mainly includes:

  • Detailed production plan for master resources
  • Detailed usage allocation plan for auxiliary resources (molds, fixtures, workers, etc.)

When using material condition constraint scheduling, you can output

  • Inventory allocation list
  • Procurement recommendation plan (material shortage list)

If the BOM of the purchased material is defined in the system, but the inventory constraint is turned off, you can output

  • Material requirements
  • Inventory in transit
  • Inventory in transit refers to the planned incoming materials for a period of time in the future. This part of the material has not yet been put into storage, so it does not exist in ERP. The approach of most companies is that work orders with insufficient materials are not produced and do not occupy production resources. This approach is unreasonable and produces a lot of order changes, and the company cannot evaluate the delivery plan in the next few days. Using incoming material planning scheduling, the plan is more accurate and can reduce plan changes. Inventory in transit is usually not maintained in ERP, and the purchasing department will use other methods to maintain it. Can be imported into the system via Excel or text format.

Scheduling data returned to ERP

After the scheduling is completed, the scheduling results need to be returned to the ERP. The data required by most ERPs is the start and end dates of work orders, and some ERP systems also require detailed production plans of master resources.

How to implement the interface:

There are two ways to implement the interface with ERP

  • Through text report method: Reports in text format can be defined in ERP, and the APS system reads the reports by defining the interface format. After scheduling is completed, a report in text format is output and read by the ERP system. This method is relatively simple to implement and does not require the development of interfaces.
  • You can also directly exchange data with ERP through the development interface. It can be developed by the APS vendor or the enterprise’s ERP maintenance staff.

MES (ShopFloor) interface:

Although we can make a plan that looks good, the situation at the production site changes at any time, and if adjustments are not made in time, the plan and the actual execution on site will soon be inconsistent. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain the production progress on site in a timely manner and modify the production plan according to the progress.

MES refers to the data collection and monitoring system at the production site. MES collects data from the production site in real time through barcode equipment, real-time communication with equipment, or manual entry.

APS and MES systems generally associate data through information such as work order numbers, processes, resources, etc., and obtain the actual production progress regularly. According to the progress, the production plan can be adjusted. This adjustment can be done automatically by the system or manually by the production manager.

Enterprises that have not implemented MES

If the enterprise has not yet implemented an MES system, the scheduling system needs to obtain the actual production progress in order to track the execution of the plan. PlanMate comes with a simple MES module, which is installed in the workshop and releases production plans by shift. Production personnel can enter actual output for each shift. The workshop can also manually enter the actual output into the report, and the system can directly read the report into the report.

Changes to production plans

If the situation on site is very different from the plan, how to modify the production plan? For example, if a device fails, all tasks on this device are postponed. A common practice is to move some tasks on the failed device to other similar devices. This method is feasible for production methods with simple processes.

However, in enterprises with multiple production processes, the production schedule is tightly arranged and tasks are intertwined. The delay of some tasks will cause conflicts in the time of many task processes. It is very difficult to adjust this kind of conflict manually. Simply going backwards Delaying the equipment will cause gaps in time, waste corporate resources, and affect delivery times. This is exactly the problem that many corporate production managers face every day.

After the automatic scheduling system is implemented, in this case, the tasks that have already occurred and are being executed are fixed, and then the system is re-optimized to generate a new production plan. The production plan obtained in this way is more optimized than a simple backward delay plan. , and the required plan revision time is also shorter.