Manufacturing

Market volatility and changes in buying patterns make the use of sophisticated demand forecasting methods a necessity in virtual any industry. The use of demand forecasting reduces inventories, helps to synchronize the Sales & Operations flow and increases customer satisfaction levels.

– Get insight in estimated cash flow and production capacity need.
– Identify seasonality’s and trends.
– Use straightforward forecasting techniques such as time series up to the most complex causal models to take multiple factors into account.

Synchronise the flow between production, sales and logistics. Create scenario’s based on demand forecast, production constraints, inventory costs, marketing campaigns and compare the KPI’s of each scenario against the overall business objectives.

– Top-down sales driven scenario’s and/or bottom-up production constraint driven scenario’s
– Integrated inventory optimisation
– KPI dashboard containing all relevant (financial) KPI’s

Planning horizon: 18-36 Months ahead

The Master Production Scheduler balances production capacity and order intake. By linking bottle-neck resources and promised delivery dates, the available capacity is used in an optimal way whilst a high delivery performance is guaranteed.

– Accept orders and promise delivery dates in real time
– Balance between MTO and MTS to reduce inventory levels
– Fulfil every order on time in full
– Ensure adequate material supply

Planning horizon: Weeks to months ahead

Create optimised, demand-driven schedules, taking all constraints and parameters into account. Deliver orders on time in full. Opt for a combination of decision support and full automatic scheduling.

– All consequences of any planning decisions are immediately visible
– Full KPI dashboard to evaluate the quality of the schedule
– Automatic material allocation

Planning horizon: Day(s) to weeks ahead

Last minute orders, process disruptions, out-of-stock raw materials or other unexpected events require immediate re-scheduling of the production process, in real time. Local re-scheduling often causes productions or capacity issues further down the chain, full and automated re-scheduling takes all possible consequences into account and derives an adjusted schedule that minimises disruptions.
Planning horizon: Day-of-Operations