Dedicated APS and ERP system for production planning – why you should use it?
ERP systems are often presented as a comprehensive tool to manage the entire manufacturing company. Is it so? Although most of them indeed already have modules for production planning, they are inferior in their capabilities to APS class systems. The solution is to integrate ERP with APS
ERP systems are often presented as a comprehensive tool to manage an entire manufacturing company. Is it so? Although most of them indeed already have modules for production planning, they are inferior in their capabilities to APS class systems. The solution is ERP integration with APS. Thus, we take advantage of the capabilities of ERP systems – as part of business management and long-term planning- and gain functionality to meet all real needs of manufacturing.
Expectations from the ERP system
ERP is an excellent tool to manage a company – however, it is a mistake to think that ERP will comprehensively support the work in production. In practice, despite the improvements and satisfaction of the departments of control, accounting or finance, the work of planners and tasks related to production control does not become easier. Strategic decisions in production are still “on the head” of the planner, who has to analyze a huge amount of data and again, willingly, comes back to the spreadsheet as the most effective planning method available.
ERP limitations and APS capabilities
A good production schedule is the basis for effective execution of orders and achieving the set business objectives, which is further supervised by ERP system.
ERP tools allow for scheduling, creating orders, resource availability schedules or adding technology. The limitation is that the system estimates the production capacity – therefore it is not based on real-time updated data (What APS can do) and does not take into account many dynamically changing factors.
Therefore it is the planner, manager or foreman who has to decide on the order of execution of the orders, analyze the wear and tear of the machines, the availability of products and their substitutes, adjust the plans in real time taking into account the availability of workers, machines or jobs.
ERP does not allow you to reliably calculate the technical cost of manufacturing products, does not provide full traceability and traceability of raw materials or verify the compatibility of the current plan with the real availability of employees. Manufacturing companies need to respond immediately to variables that affect the production process. That’s why production planning and scheduling systems are increasingly complementing ERPs.
Advantages of APS
APS system allows you to effectively plan any type of production, taking into account the numerous variables and exceptions. Artificial intelligence algorithms used authored system OptiMES, Enables quick scheduling, ongoing adjustments (manual, semi-automatic or automatic) and optimization to meet targets and deadlines.
This includes automatic adjustment of the order basket. Reliable data for managers and customers, bottleneck optimization, what-if simulations are just some of the features that allow you to increase company revenue, reduce production costs and increase the timeliness and efficiency of production. Employees can work more efficiently with document templates, BOMs and electronic workflows. The function of estimating the profitability of subcontracting an order is an added advantage.
To learn more about APS system capabilities contact your team OptiMES.
