With the increasing diversification of market demands and the shortening of product life cycles, companies have adopted new production and management methods and technological innovations, making multi-variety small-batch production the main production method in today's society. Unlike the previous large-scale production, the current multi-variety small-batch method has put forward higher requirements for supply chain coordination: rapid response to customer needs, rapid delivery, and closer collaboration with suppliers. Objectively, it requires a faster and more efficient planning system for overall coordination.

The traditional APS system coordinates production resources and simulates and optimizes planning results. It is powerful in terms of functionality, but its shortcomings are also very obvious in enterprise applications. The heavy technical and functional architecture and overly cumbersome operating procedures have become important factors restricting the improvement of enterprise production efficiency. Fangtian APS advanced scheduling system is specially designed to solve the pain points in the field of enterprise planning. It can respond to needs quickly, make plans multiple times a day, support 2-4 hours of production scheduling, and greatly improve the efficiency of planning operations. Today we will learn the basic logic behind Fangtian APS and see how they use the APS system to connect the "main artery" of intelligent manufacturing collaboration?

The master production plan is the interface between the manufacturing enterprise and the customer. Because the master demand plan is the demand plan after the delivery commitment (key materials and key capacity are balanced). Remember: the master production plan is a demand plan, a completion plan for production demand completion.Completion + Standards of ProductionLead Time =The date the customer requested it.

The daily operation plan is the interface between the manufacturing enterprise and the supplier. Because the daily operation plan is formed by the master production plan after MRP decomposition, forming the material requirement plan, and then scheduling. When scheduling, the following three conditions are generally considered:

1. Demand constraints of the master production plan.

The master demand plan is also a dynamic plan, with increments and decrements, insertions and cancellations. Therefore, when scheduling, the latest master production plan needs to be used for calculations.

2. Supplier's commitment to purchase order

Suppliers will make commitments to purchase orders placed by manufacturers, but there are still many variables based on the commitments. The daily operation plan must be started and there must be no shortage of materials. Therefore, it is necessary to schedule according to the latest actual delivery status of suppliers.

3. Capacity constraints

Unexpected anomalies may occur in machines, molds, personnel, etc., and there may also be quality anomalies. Therefore, scheduling also needs to use actual or preset production capacity as a constraint.

When scheduling based on demand, supply, and production capacity, the work tasks are relatively stable, at least in the short term (1-3 days or 1-5 days). This can also be used as a basis for suppliers to deliver materials or as a basis for delivery time.

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So how do you schedule?

1. Definition of Scheduling

Scheduling is the management action that binds process tasks to machines. It generally includes three management operations: production order sorting, machine existing load processing, and process task allocation.

The first step in scheduling is to sort the production orders and prioritize all production orders (or process tasks).

2. How to schedule?

method1. Sorting + short-term manual dispatch (TOC method)

Sorting + short-term manual dispatching is the TOC method, and the name of the method is SDBR. That is, the priority of production orders comes from sales orders or inventory consumption. Sales orders with urgent delivery dates are given priority, and those with low inventory are given priority.

Manually, based on this priority order and the principle of urgency first, the process tasks corresponding to the production order are manually assigned to operators or machines.

The biggest advantage of this method is that it is simple, practical, and easy to promote in the workshop. Because, if there is no APS scheduling, the workshop will manually dispatch workers.

The biggest drawback of this method is that, first of all, the mold change cannot be optimized. Because it is a manual, real-time dispatch, without pre-dispatching, it generally increases the number of mold changes. Secondly, if it is an assembly work order, since there is no pre-arrangement, the supplier's response time is short and the delivery of materials is more troublesome.

This defect is also caused by the fact that it can only be used for short cycles and cannot be used for long-term pre-arrangement. In addition, the material set of this method requires manual query, verification and material locking.

Method 2: Pre-cycle software scheduling

With forward cycle scheduling, you can also consider the complete set of materials, but the capacity is equivalent to unlimited capacity. With this method, manual scheduling is also more troublesome and requires software to implement.

The advantage is that the software calculation is simple and takes into account the completeness of materials.

Disadvantages: unlimited production capacity and requires software support.

Method 3: [Critical sequence scheduling + non-critical sequence period] scheduling

This method requires software implementation.

First, we need to define what is a critical sequence and what is a non-critical sequence. Under normal circumstances, the production capacity is fully loaded, which is generally the bottleneck. Of course, the assembly sequence is generally a critical sequence, but the packaging sequence is not.

Secondly, we need to build a model. We need to define the scheduling model of the entire factory based on the defined key sequence to ensure that it is consistent with the business scenario.

Third, define the standard cycle

Since we have not made detailed limited capacity scheduling for non-critical capacity resources, we need to evaluate a reasonable cycle for non-critical capacity resources. Generally, this reasonable cycle can be based on previous statistics, or it can be estimated and adjusted.

According to the above three steps, a scheduling software can be customized, which can basically perform system scheduling for not very complex scenarios and carry out work start management based on the system scheduling.

Fourth, APS advanced planning and scheduling software detailed scheduling

APS Advanced Planning and Scheduling System is a professional scheduling software for complex scenarios. In theory, APS can schedule all process tasks of the factory, and can realize dynamic scheduling: when demand, production capacity and supply change, they can be scheduled in real time. The frequency of real time depends on the operation time of APS (data import + calculation + data release). Of course, under normal circumstances, the actual scheduling of the factory is 1-2 times a day, and no more than 3 times at most (once a half day, morning, afternoon, and evening).

It should be pointed out that method one is "secondary scheduling" in the Fangtian system, and method three is "primary scheduling". Primary scheduling + secondary scheduling are collectively referred to as the APS advanced scheduling system.

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Basic principles of Fangtian APS advanced scheduling:

1. Scheduling is not the more complex the better, but the simpler the better. Only simplicity can be executed.

2. Scheduling is not about taking as many photos as possible, but about taking as few photos as possible. Don’t schedule if you can avoid it! Only schedule the key photos that can achieve better control.

3. The higher the scheduling frequency, the better. Instead, the scheduling needs to be stable. The fundamental purpose of scheduling is to allow the workshop to operate in an orderly manner.

4. The scheduling cycle is not the longer the better, nor the shorter the better. It should be determined according to the manufacturing cycle of the entire product. Generally, 2-3 weeks is appropriate. If it is too long, the stability is poor and the guiding significance is insufficient. If it is too short, the preparation period of the workshop and the supplier is too short and they cannot respond sufficiently.

5. Scheduling requires a suitable freeze period. If the freeze period is too long, the production flexibility is insufficient. If the freeze period is too short, the operation stability is insufficient. Generally, a 1-3 day schedule freeze period is a reasonable choice. A freeze period of more than one week is obviously too long.

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In short, scheduling, planning and dispatching personnel are not easy. Without scheduling, workshops and team leaders are not easy. It is important to point out that there must be scheduling in the workshop, but it is either manual, autonomous, or chaotic.

The benefits of scheduling may not be seen, but the disadvantages of not scheduling are definitely there, because chaos is inevitable without scheduling.

Once again, I would like to remind you that sorting + manual dispatching is the simplest scheduling method! If there is a threshold for the system, it must be APS advanced scheduling, which is the core of the Fangtian system.