With decades of experience in Advanced Planning and Scheduling solutions for both Steel and Aluminum as well as Petroleum and Chemicals manufacturing, we use world class software technology and top modeling skills to deliver solutions that deal with planning and scheduling problems both inside and outside of the plant fence.
Examples of areas we cover inside the plant fence are:
- Production Planning
- Production Scheduling
- Blending Optimisation (for petroleum)
- Melt shop scheduling (for steel and aluminium)
Examples of areas we cover outside the plant fence are:
- Demand Management and Forecasting
- Strategic and logistics planning
- Multi-plant production planning
- Pipeline scheduling
- Distribution and logistics scheduling
We deliver web-based, multi user applications which use the latest web services methods to integrate with the other operations/ manufacturing systems at plant level as well as ERP systems at enterprise level. We also ensure profitability improvement objectives are met from the early stages of our projects.
Demand Management/Forecasting
The Demand Management/Forecasting applications offer the ability to predict future demand using statistical methods for analysing historical data (e.g. existing sales and orders data). Moreover, they allow the integration in the forecast of marketing techniques and promotional events affecting market behavior. The Demand Management/Forecasting applications provide answers to the following questions:
What is expected to be sold and when?
What is the percentage of agreement between actual and forecasted sales?
How successfully is the product cycle managed?
When shall a marketing campaign start?
Where and in what percentage is the increase of production capacity necessary?
The process of demand forecasting is much more effective through applications that offer effective analysis capabilities of sales historical data and statistically forecasted sales quantities.
Production/Distribution Planning
Production and/or distribution planning applications allocate optimally the forecasted demand to the production or distribution units of the supply chain network, taking into consideration all relevant constraints including, inventory levels for each product, transportation capacity and time, production capacity and raw material availability. Optimization techniques, such as linear programming and heuristics, are used to minimize the production and inventory costs and to maximize revenue. At the same time, our applications provide the ability to examine what-if scenarios related to demand or supply changes, reduction of capacity, cost fluctuations etc.
Optimisation and "What - If" analysis functionality are easily activated by user -friendly icons and buttons. Results are presented in the form of maps, graphs, tables, etc.
Scheduling
Scheduling applications focus on defining the sequence, timing and volume of manufacturing activities or movements to be executed in each production unit. The resulting sequence of activities takes into account all capacity, inventory, material availability and delivery time constraints and, at the same time, increases throughput and dramatically minimizes the operational costs.
The interface of the scheduling application is extremely user friendly, enabling the combination of advanced optimization techniques and algorithms with human skills and experience. The scheduler has the ability to modify the schedule and see instantly the consequences, infeasibilities, delays in delivery, cost changes etc. The production manager continues to have the full control of what will be produced and where, having at his disposal an advanced tool to help him take correct and intelligent decisions.
The schedule is easily modified in a fully argumentative Gantt Chart. The economical and operational results of each modification are automatically presented and alternative solutions are given.
