Special feature Planning & Scheduling/Demand Forecasting
The functionality to determine
alternative sourcing and make/buy or
routing decisions is now a fundamental
requirement within many evolved
supply chains.
be much more graphical and intuitive than
spreadsheets. “This is why we offer our
Preactor Viewer to provide access to a live
schedule while not allowing the schedule to
be changed via the Viewer,” he explained.
Ewing reflects that it is welcoming to see that
communication between departments is on
the rise. However, he makes the point that
information can mean different things to
different people. According to Ewing,
understanding what to take out of the
communications process and when, is the key.
“This is the basic premise of Managed by
Exception tools,” he said. “They are designed
to look for anything out of the ordinary that
does not conform to plan, so as to action
before it becomes a problem.”
finite scheduling component within its are becoming compressed, driven in part Planning for the future
Manufacturing Execution offering. The same by the need to be able to react to changing What will be the next major developments
thing goes with shop floor data collection demand & supply constraints sooner. He within the world of Planning & Scheduling/
equipment; even spreadsheets to update the adds that the functionality to determine Demand Forecasting solutions? Ewing
system. This is then used by the users to alternative sourcing, make/buy or routing believes that the future will be totally
compare the base schedule they generated, decisions – such as the capability available dependant upon how each market reshapes
say, at the beginning of the week, with what in Logility Voyager Solutions – is now a itself. “Products that were once the most
actually took place. And these updates to the fundamental requirement within many evolved profitable may not be when the market
schedule are used as a baseline for the next supply chains. swings,” he said, adding that, equally, items
schedule to be generated.” that do not feature strongly today may
Data sharing become a company’s most profitable assets
Ewing takes the view that, for vendors Novels spoke about how Planning & tomorrow. “This is why careful monitoring of
wishing to survive, closing the loop will be a Scheduling solutions can benefit not just trends by SKU is crucial,” he said, adding that
fundamental requirement. “Redundancies are workflow practice but also other areas of the S&OP will continue to feature quite strongly;
now a regular occurrence and the resources business through wider data sharing; with the as will Collaborative Planning and Multi-
echelon. In addition, he pointed out that the
“
mathematics that will sit behind Demand
… when you’re talking about capacity at fairly highly aggregated levels
Solutions’ tools of the immediate future has
true detailed scheduling doesn’t use buckets of time, it deals with sequences
already been developed; with the company’s
and individual resources. Still, many systems continue to try to schedule in
next-generation of products being be
launched later this year.
buckets of time, although this loses the credibility of the schedule.”
– Mike Novels. Preactor International.
Novels anticipates that the next big develop -
ment will be multithreading applications
that can use the power of the multi-core
required to run such systems are becoming sales & marketing team, for example. “This is processes. “For example, you might want
a rare breed,” he said. “As such, tools and a very important part of what we do; sharing to run ten different scheduling rules in
services will need to take on a much greater production progress of individual orders, and parallel to get the best schedule … if we
role for when the present economic climate allowing sales people to get Capable-to- did manage to access these multi-core
changes again. It is therefore crucial that the Promise enquiries remotely onto a currently processes it would allow us to run detail
information used is both accurate and timely.” live schedule,” he said. However, Novels scheduling on a much longer time horizon
Murphy makes the point that planning cycles added that the display required often needs to than we currently do.” circlesolid
www.logisticsit.com
MANUFACTURING
March 2009 &LOGISTICSIT
53
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