Flexible architecture in scheduling systems is more than important, it's almost required. Not only do constraints change as you move from one type of manufacturing to another but there can be major issues within the same types of manufacturing facilities. Plants that run the same products can often be quite different from one another. Some of the differences include differences in automation, staffing or crewing, union rules and organizational structures which can make deploying the same system across multiple plants a real challenge.

One of the things that we like about the Tuppas package is that they work with each plant to setup an interface and data structure that makes sense at the plant level. As if that were'nt difficult enough they can also unify the structures to fascilitate corporate reporting. ERP integration, customer service integration and material requirements interefaces are all available even though there might be differences at the plant. If you haven't seen the Tuppas demos yet and your shopping they are worth a look.