Demand Solutions: Manufacturing

Manage and maintain material, capacity and shop floor schedules in one integrated solution

Demand Solutions Manufacturing Planning & Scheduling (DS MPS) is a complete production solution that enables a manufacturer to accurately balance the constraints of materials, resources (equipment and workforce) against customer demand. The Demand Solutions Planning Software is more sophisticated than spreadsheets and rough cut capacity planning tools as it enables manufacturers to balance material, capacity and shop floor schedules simultaneously to meet customer demand “on-time” at the lowest costs.

Gain a Competitive Advantage with DS MPS

Increase revenue and margin by producing more goods with existing facilities
Maximize the scheduling of scarce and/or expensive resources
Improve customer service by including promise dates in scheduling decisions and by managing all the variables available including alternate materials, alternate resources and safety stock
Promise orders based on current material and capacity constraints - not based on static lead times (Available to Promise)
Reduce inventory by aligning demand to supply
Reduce resource downtime by managing production setup times, preventative maintenance, etc.
Reduce planning and manufacturing cycle time by improving information management

A Flexible Solution: easy data migration

DS Manufacturing Planning & Scheduling is flexible to meet the needs of your organization. The intuitive user interface and robust functionality built on advanced Microsoft .Net architecture allow companies to quickly deploy and begin gaining value from their DS MPS. The Manufacturing Software is fully integrated with other Demand Solutions planning tools such as DS Forecasting and DS Replenishment, or it can be used as a stand-alone solution using data from any ERP system.

When combined with Demand Solutions Forecasting and Replenishment products, DS MPS utilizes planned orders from DS Replenishment to simultaneously plan material and capacity to support customer requirements while minimizing the impact on manufacturing resources such as tools, machines and workforce. The efficient manufacturing software identifies mismatches (shortages and overages) between supply and demand - even those that are months away. Such visibility provides organizations ample time to adjust (up or down) purchasing plans and adjust (up or down) manufacturing capacities including machines, tools and labor.

DS MPS Features:

What-if analysis capability to identify if a new order can be satisfied, given a set of orders that are already planned in the system's Infinite Capacity Planning
Quickly identify (graphically) the impact of changes in vendor deliveries, changes in customer required delivery dates or quantities using a powerful concept called pegging
Automatically consider alternate materials or alternate capacity
Manage outsourced manufacturing
Prioritize an order based on customer
Model capacity constraints such as setup time, wait time, min queue time, transfer batch quantity, yield, alternate resource and alternate routing
Model material constraints such as operation dependent consumption, lot sizes and yields
Pre-build to accommodate anticipated peaks
Consolidate Orders - Customer Orders, Purchase Orders and Production or Work Orders
Support of one-level of distribution from factory to customer while planning
Incremental planning of an order
Model calendar such as working shifts, holidays, planned maintenance and overtime
Plan for preventative maintenance of machines

Plan. Schedule. Optimize Resources.

Moving beyond guess-and-check planning tools, DS Manufacturing Planning & Scheduling encompasses the full spectrum of production planning and scheduling. Shop Floor Scheduling involves sequencing of work orders on resource based on capacity constraints. DS MPS achieves this with a four-step approach: considering factory times; resource availability; combining orders with the same setup to reduce sequence-dependent setup time; providing planned start and end times for all work orders and loading sub-resources.

Shop Floor Scheduling Features:

Display scheduled orders graphically using a Gantt Chart
Automatically schedule: complete shop floor, individual machine or labor, individual customer sales order
Manually move scheduled orders via drag and drop functionality while the system validates these moves against customer constraints
Utilize your desired scheduling strategy such as minimize WIP or maximize resource utilization
Lock a schedule
Graphically represent the links between upstream and downstream operations
Consider factors in scheduling such as working time, setup time, wait time, min queue time and transfer batch quantity
Model sequence-dependent setup time

Reliable, Accurate and Easy to Use

With DS Manufacturing Planning & Scheduling, organizations can increase revenue and optimize resources with one integrated solution. The Manufacturing Software is perfect for small and midsize enterprises -- it is affordable, easy-to-use and yields fast return on investment.