The Benefits of Planning & Scheduling

"The missing ingredient in most demand forecasting/supply chain planning exercises is a rigorous Sales and Operational Planning (S&OP) process. Many chemical companies took the easy path of implementing sophisticated applications without changing the way they forecast and plan. They were mesmerized by the promise of complex optimization algorithms. The application of supply chain planning in the Chemical industry could be a case study for the expression "garbage in, garbage out" (GIGO). Some chemical companies have addressed the issue and are busy reengineering the S&OP process. The Return on Investment (ROI) can be substantial. The correlation between use of technology and performance is not as strong."

A typical organization can expect to see savings of 5% to 15% after implementing an optimized planning or scheduling solution. Usually our clients' investment in this technology is paid back in less than a year. Below we list some typical benefits from implementation of an optimized planning or scheduling package.

Planning

• Generate a rigorously defined operating plan based on real data
• Develop operating plans explicitly oriented towards business goals
• Guaranteed optimality, i.e. the generated plan is the one most likely to achieve business objectives, given the business' constraints
• What-if analysis- the capability to run what-if scenarios to evaluate the consequences of desired actions
• Incorporation of uncertainty- using a stochastic programming approach, we can account for the effect of various future events on the viability of your operating plan
• Takes the guesswork out of formulating a plan and establishes a consistent method for doing it quarter after quarter, year after year
• Customized user interface- continue to use the same data and report formats you are comfortable with
• Multi-tiered approach- select the solution with technology, graphics and cost that meets your needs and budget

Scheduling

• Generate just in time and ASAP schedules
• Forward, backward, and mixed mode scheduling
• Total facilities loading analysis
• The power to intervene and change a generated schedule
• See order flow, quickly find orders, answer customer queries
• Identify bottlenecks within the operation and determine the cause
• Link material to specific operations
• Plan and schedule labor, tooling, materials, machines and other resources
• Very rapid schedule generation
• Variable capacity by resource
• Create buffered for ship dates
• Dependent resource requirements (machine plus labor plus tool, etc.)
• Customizable screens; use your own terminology
• Gantt charts and graphs can be easily configured