Advanced Planning Systems Today
Advanced Planning Systems, or APS, are more encompassing than production scheduling software. These applications consider not just shop floor capacity constraints, but also consider inventory and bill of material constraints, inventory stocking and replenishment levels. Advanced planning and scheduling software helps it's users answer questions like, "Will we be able to execute this forecast? In which plant should we run this production? When should we promise this customer’s order?"
These systems help manufacturers create the most optimal schedules, while meeting a number of important priorities.
Traditional planning and scheduling systems (such as MRP, or manufacturing resource planning) use a step by step procedure to allocate material and production capacity. This approach is simple but cumbersome, and does not easily adapt to changes in demand, resource capacity or material availability. Materials and capacity are planned separately, and many systems do not consider limited material availability or capacity constraints. This approach sometimes results in plans that can not be executed.
Unlike these systems, APS simultaneously plans and schedules production based on available materials and capacity. This usually results in a more realistic production plan. To meet this goal of a realistic production plan requires real-time access to data, total asset visibility, performance metrics and automated decision-support tools.
APS software can operate in time frames which are significantly longer than the sum of all procurement and production lead times.Advanced planning and scheduling software can operation in concert with or independently from MRP/ERP systems. While it can be used to generate plans for one location, the APS software can also consider multiple locations throughout the supply chain. Used in this role, advanced planning software becomes an integral part of a supply chain management software suite.
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