Optimizing a modern-day manufacturing facility is a complex task. Manufacturers face an overwhelming array of conflicting demands, including reducing stock, improving lead times, increasing asset utilization and lowering overtime, all while cutting costs. This seemingly impossible challenge is further complicated by harsh constraints such as the availability of skilled labor, machine breakdowns, demand volatility and unreliable supply chains.

Even the most meticulously crafted plans can lead to producing the wrong products or missing critical deadlines, and most manufacturers turn to technology to help them plan and schedule effectively. However, while diving into the details, many organizations miss key components when digitizing the planning and scheduling processes. Following are seven key capabilities that are necessary to ensure effective and responsive planning and scheduling processes. 

Accurate demand forecasting. This is a foundation of effective manufacturing planning. In today's global supply chains, collating sales and forecast data and making sense of it is no trivial task. Statistical models can help improve forecast accuracy and help organizations allocate demand to manufacturing facilities and align production with market needs. Without these tools, manufacturers risk creating the perfect schedule to produce goods that no one wants.

Realistic estimates of process durations. These are essential for developing credible plans and schedules. However, plans are often based on operation timings from an enterprise resource planning system, which in turn relies on estimates originally provided by design engineers for costing purposes. These standard costing estimates rarely reflect actual performance accurately and can be difficult to update without sign-off from the finance director. Planners must be able to differentiate between costed minutes and planned minutes, and they should update planned durations based on actual performance during execution. Without this capability, any plan will be what you wish for, not what you believe will happen.

Up-to-date knowledge of factory operations. It’s clearly impossible to know what to schedule next if you’re unaware of what has already been completed. This includes being informed about completed operations, available inventory and the status of equipment and personnel. 

Capacity planning model. Incomplete or inaccurate assumptions about constraints lead to plans that are simply not achievable. It’s easy to oversimplify this, but the devil is in the details. You need to be able to model all the constraints that limit a factory's ability to produce, including equipment availability, varying rates for different equipment, labor requirements and availability, tooling requirements, setup constraints, and additional resources such as storage space, power, lifting equipment, customer visits and subcontractors.

Clearly, these kinds of complexities can't be modeled by a single, static standard time per operation, and a much more sophisticated representation of process constraints is needed to have any chance of creating a plausible plan.

Optimization model. All of the above should facilitate creating a plan that is possible.  But is it optimal? Manufacturers balance many conflicting requirements. 

An optimization model helps in making the best decisions given trade-offs between conflicting objectives. For example, it can balance the cost of overtime against that of being late, or the cost of lead time against that of inventory. The model ensures that the most efficient and cost-effective decisions are made.

Real-time visibility and re-planning. An “optimal” plan is ineffective if it remains static on a planner’s desk. Real-time visibility of the plan, and progress against it during execution, is crucial for responsive manufacturing. It provides a single source of truth, and allows everyone in the factory to work off aligned priorities and make immediate adjustments to the plan in response to unforeseen events. The ability to re-plan effectively ensures that the factory can adapt to changes and continue to meet production goals despite disruptions.

Effective planning and scheduling in manufacturing require a comprehensive approach that integrates key capabilities across numerous business functions, bridging the gap between sales, planning, engineering and operations. By deploying these components, manufacturers can navigate the complexities and conflicting demands of modern production environments. Embracing technology and sophisticated models will not only enhance operational efficiency, but also enable manufacturers to remain agile and responsive to ever-changing market conditions.

Mark Carleton is general manager with Eyelit Technologies.