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TIPS & BEST PRACTICES
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ARTICLES
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What are the prerequisites that a company should meet internally before attempting to use APS?

APS is a very "data-intensive" tool requiring the right information in order to be usable. You'll need to have routings and bills-of-material for discrete manufacturers or formulas and run-rates for process-manufacturers. For inventory-constrained scheduling, it's also important to have a reliable inventory control process with accurate on-hand quantities. Also, if you're planning cycle will be daily you'll need to track production completions at least daily; if weekly then production updates can be tracked weekly. Of course the schedule is only as good as the data that goes into it.

We're not sure if we need "finite" scheduling. When is finite better than infinite?

While rough-cut "infinite" capacity planning is useful for planning labor and capacity levels long-term, most manufacturing companies will find it much more value to use "finite" constraint-based planning. Unless you'll be scheduling a very low volume of production orders (maybe 25) and can manually make drag-and-drop adjustments, finite scheduling will afford you many benefits that infinite planning won't. Even if you have enough capacity on-average there are likely "clumps" of workload that will create temporary bottlenecks. Finite scheduling gives you the insight of where and when theses bottlenecks will occur, the impact that changes to one order's schedule has on others, and detailed, actionable plans that save immense time on the shop floor and in the planning department.

How do you measure APS success?

While there are some common measures, this really depends on your business: what makes you more competitive, how your costs are distributed, and what kind of customer demand you have to meet. It's critical at the outset of an APS implementation to identify your critical areas and determine in which of those areas APS can help. For example, if on-time shipments is a problem then you'll probably want to track due-date performance. If running out of materials in production is a frequent occurrence then track the frequency of these interruptions on the shop floor. If excessive WIP or long lead-times is a problem then setup metrics for make-spans and queue times. Another common goal is to reduce the time planners spend updating schedules so tracking time-spent before and after the implementation would clearly be helpful.

Who usually benefits most from an APS tool?

The amount of benefit that APS can provide is primarily dependent upon the size of the problems you have to solve. If you miss delivery dates frequently, have trouble quoting accurate and competitive lead-times, have high inventory levels, spend a lot of time managing schedules, or incur frequent changeovers on key equipment then the value of APS will be high. Other indicators of a need for APS would be: a high number of SKUs or custom orders, many production resources, expensive production equipment, frequent changes in customer orders and engineering change orders, complex manufacturing flows that are hard to schedule manually, long setup times, job batching requirements, and quality-related problems that can arise from schedule mistakes.

Why do we need an APS tool if we already have an ERP system?

ERP systems are great tools for managing "transactions" such as order entry, inventory control, etc. Most of them evolved from accounting systems and their primary focus has always been on keeping track of what has happened rather than planning for what is going to happen. As a result, the architecture has been optimized for transaction processing rather than large-scale, high-volume data analytics. An example result of this is that a typical MRP re-gen can takes hours or days while an APS re-gen usually takes a few seconds. This is a critical usability factor because no planner can afford to wait hours, let alone days after every schedule change. In addition, the expertise for designing and creating an APS system is very different and specialized, and therefore very hard to come by. Most ERP development projects leave planning as an afterthought and only cover it at a superficial level. APS on the other hand is all about the details. That's why most "classic" scheduling that is included in ERP systems goes unused - simply because it is, for most companies, too simplistic to be usable. APS is an effective addition to ERP because it effectively solves exactly the problems that it was built to solve.

When I'm evaluating APS tools how should I compare them?

An APS evaluation process should be focused on one thing - solving your critical business issues. So start by identifying what problems you want to solve then make sure the tool can "model" your constraints and ultimately solve your problems. Create a prioritized list of two things: (1) your APS-related critical business issues, and (2) the rules and constraints that your planners have to take into consideration when creating schedules. Work with your APS vendor to go through both of these in detail. Other considerations are technology, architecture, and of course total cost of ownership. Technology and architecture should be as current as possible and fit in well with your other systems and the expertise of your IT personnel. Data volume can also be a critical factor. Before choosing a system, verify that it can handle your volume of orders; To be usable, a drag-and-drop reschedule in a fully loaded schedule should be able to shift other work out of the way and take just a few seconds to process, not minutes. Where cost is concerned, implementation costs can be very high for systems that require extensive programming to build models so be sure these costs are considered along with the cost of the software itself. Finally, be sure that if you need multiple planners to be able to login and make changes concurrently and/or if you need support for multi-plant coordination, verify that your APS supports this - unlike ERP, most APS systems are single-planner, single-plant systems so shop carefully.

How difficult is it for a typical production planner to learn to use an APS tool?

The learning curve probably depends more on the person than on the system. If you choose someone who is comfortable with computers, understands your production constraints, and is a quick-learner it can take just a matter of weeks with very little training to become proficient. On the other hand, if these characteristics are absent it can be a much longer transition.

What industries is DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling suited for?

We have installed scheduling software in hundreds of factories in many different industries and we've created DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling to be extremely adaptable making it capable of handling most production scheduling problems. Some of the industries that we have experience with include: Food & Beverage, Chemical, Job Shop, medical equipment manufacturing, industrial equipment manufacturing, coffee roasting, high-tech, printing, forges, injection molders, and truck equipment manufacturing/automotive. If you'd like to confirm that our system will work for you please give us a call - we have scheduling experts standing by to speak with you about your specific challenges.

Does DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling allow for manual schedule adjustments?

Absolutely! This is one of DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling greatest strengths - the ease with which you can make changes in a graphical drag-and-drop environment. While most scheduling systems allow limited drag-and-drop, DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling takes it one step further with "capacity-constrained" drag-and-drop. This means that when you make changes, DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling adjust the schedule to ensure that capacity is not violated and material constraints are followed. This allows you to make changes quickly and easily and also see the impact of your changes instantly. There are also many other manual and automatic scheduling tools. Give us a call to take a look at what we can offer you.

Why should we choose DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling over other systems?

DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling will do a better job of creating accurate schedules that respect all of your constraints (labor, machines, materials, tools, storage). DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling is easier to use due to its "capacity constrained drag-and-drop". DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling is based on the flagship Microsoft platform, the .Net Framework, which means it is more familiar to your users (like Microsoft Office), is widely supported, is easier to integrate with, and has a long lifetime ahead of it. DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling is the only true "collaborative" scheduling system that allows multiple planners to be logged on and rescheduling simultaneously so you can work the way you need to as your company grows.

We don't have any "pegging" information in our ERP system that connects different levels of the bill of material. Will DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling still be able to coordinate production between work orders or will we have to add these links manually?

DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling can examine your bill of material for each work order to determine material requirements and then automatically peg material flows across work orders (any number of levels). So even if you don't have explicit links DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling will still alert you or reschedule dependent work orders if a supplying work order will be delayed (by drag-and-drop or otherwise). Note that you can also create explicit links between work orders in the event that the intermediate material must be allocated to one or more specific downstream work orders.

Is the system updatable in "real-time" so that our schedule is always accurate?

Yes. DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling updates instantly whenever it receives information such as the completion of an operation or the breakdown of a machine. The update can be pulled from your ERP system or even come from a direct feed from a labor reporting or shop floor tracking system. DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling also has its own screens, called "Shop Views" which are designed to show schedules to shop floor personnel and allow for reporting of production.

Can DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling schedule multiple plants?

Yes. DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling is a "collaborative" scheduling system that can handle any number of Plants and simultaneous Master Schedulers, Viewers, and What-If users. (sold separately). Plants can be scheduled independently or inter-dependently according to your needs.

Will we need a new administrative position to use your software?

No. Most companies find that using DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling actually greatly reduces the amount of time spent managing production. Time that is now spent expediting orders, consolidating information, and updating spreadsheets can be spent on more pro-active tasks since most of the planning process will be automated. A typical user spends anywhere from one to three hours per day reviewing and adjusting the schedule once DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling is in use.

What skill set is needed to use DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling?

It is important that your DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling scheduler(s) are: (1) very familiar with your production operations and what would make a "good" schedule and (2) reasonably comfortable using computers on a daily basis (Someone familiar with Excel will find DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling easy to learn).

How much of our team's time will be required to setup DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling?

The amount of time your planners or production managers usually spend varies from 40 to 120 hours in total. We realize that your team is very busy running your business so we work remotely over the internet and schedule our time with your personnel based on their priorities and work schedules. An implementation usually takes anywhere from four to twelve weeks in calendar time.

Will we need a new server for DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling?

Usually not. Unless you are scheduling several thousands of orders or your servers are aging, DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling can usually run on your existing hardware.

What size company is DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling best suited for?

Companies that will find DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling to be a good "fit" in terms of functionality and return on investment will typically have substantial manufacturing operations with significant equipment investments or large number of orders that need to be coordinated and delivered on-time. As a general rule, companies that are larger than 10 million to one billion USD in annual revenue will find that there is a system level of DS Advanced Planning & Scheduling that will provide a substantial return on investment.

What are the requirements and costs of integrating APS to our ERP system?

Most APS integrations are "bi-directional", importing data such as: work orders (with attached routings/BOMS/recipes), sale orders, inventory, purchase orders, work centers, equipment, and sometimes employees, and exporting schedule dates for work orders to facilitate ERP visibility and material planning. One thing we've learned is that it's important that integration tools be very flexible since every company uses both their ERP and APS system differently. The typical time to develop an integration from scratch will vary by the amount of data that needs to be shared. We usually expect to spend anywhere from two to four days creating a new integration.