Many manufacturing companies struggle with customer satisfaction and manufacturing costs due to disconnects between three distinct planning processes.

One process - Master Production Scheduling (MPS) - is often supported by a module in their ERP system. This plan usually has weekly buckets of how much to produce based on the difference between forecasted demand and actual demand. This plan may even take constraints into account. However, unless the production environment is very simple, an ERP MPS typically can’t handle constraints well. You don’t know whether the plan is feasible to execute because traditional MPS systems can’t easily or quickly take constraints into consideration.

Another process – Material Requirements Planning (MRP) – is often utilized by manufacturers with multi-step production processes. They will send the MPS plan to a Material Requirements Planning (MRP) system, or skip the MPS step altogether, so that dependent demand can be planned under the finished goods. But much like MPS, MRP tools do not take constraints and finite resource capacities into consideration well enough to produce a feasible production plan.

The final process, Detailed Scheduling for production, is often asked to start with an infeasible production plan. Its job is to take the MPS and/or MRP plans and execute them. Invariably, it can’t execute the plans that were infeasible from the get-go. Production quantities and dates shift. This leads to missed ship dates and customer satisfaction issues. Or expedites are introduced, which increase costs.

The good news is that there is a solution to this problem.

Speakers:

Demand Solutions

David Joiner, Director of Professional Services

David Joiner is the Director of Professional Services for Demand Solutions. Before joining Demand Solutions in 2013, David spent 18 years with Taylor Manufacturing Systems USA, LLC. At Taylor, David served in almost every capacity imaginable related to Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) solutions, including implementation, development, support and sales. David joined Taylor in 1996 after working for Russell Athletic developing an industry-specific scheduling software tool for the textiles industry. He has a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech.