Digitalisation is changing everything, and manufacturers must react quickly and intelligently to unexpected changes, while being able to respond to shorter lead times and satisfy customer demands. These challenges are faced not only by large enterprises, but also small and medium businesses. Siemens Opcenter APS solutions have been specifically developed to meet this need, using advanced algorithms that balance demand and capacity to generate achievable production schedules.
Siemens Opcenter APS can be used for long-term strategic planning covering months and years, medium-term tactical planning with a few weeks planning horizon and for detailed sequencing and scheduling.
Siemens Opcenter APS can be installed out of the box, and can be customized and configured where necessary. It can be used standalone to manage planning and scheduling, and is also designed for integration with other software such as ERP, MES, Data collection, Forecasting, Demand Planning and OEE applications.
Advanced Planning and Scheduling for Electronics
The Advanced Planning software is a strategic decision tool designed to aid you in long and mid-term planning. It considers forecast and long-term orders, supports decision making about the feasibility and affects the general direction of productions.
The Advanced Planning software supports major production capacity decisions surrounding extending the work force, resource capacity, and factories. It helps you determine what and how much to make, where and when to make it, and exactly what materials and resources are required.
Planning can be executed in finite or infinite capacity mode and planning time periods can be days, weeks, months, or a combination of all three. If used together with our advanced scheduling system, detailed production schedule information can be sent back to the planning system to override planned volume with scheduled volume. Master Production Schedule (MPS) can then be re-calculated using production schedule as the base for new results.
The planning Bill of Materials (BOM) can be exploded, and then the production plan for lower level items is calculated in the same way. Based on the MOM explosion and the production plan, proposed material purchase requirements can be exported to an ERP system or Excel for action.
Once an initial Master Production Schedule (MPS) has been created, data can be displayed as stock profile graphs and capacity usage graphs. The MPS can be changed by simply clicking and dragging a point on the stock or capacity graphs, and the production of a particular item can be moved from one planning period to another. Any changes made will be reflected in all the linked plot and grid windows.
In a make-to-order environment, stock levels of finished and intermediate items will not be part of the key process parameters. But there will still be the need to evaluate the effects of future demand changes on the manufacturing process. When a change in demand occurs, whether in terms of quantity or delivery dates, there is a need to be able to quickly assess if it is possible to meet the new requirements.
Generate accurate and achievable master production schedules (MPS) considering rough cut capacity, pack forward figures, target days of stock cover, manufacturing preferences, minimum and maximum re-order quantities, re-order multiples and product shelf life. Production capacity can be specified as a quantity, duration or weight. By using the Preactor calendar system capacity, production capacity can be varied over time. The capacity available then limits the production volume created in each period.
Digitalisation is a key concept to help manufacturers implement lean and agile manufacturing processes and is critical to your long-term success. Our APS solutions targeted at electronics manufacturers provide a suite of tools that help planners, manufacturing line operators, and management to work together to optimise production processes within the digital enterprise to increase efficiency and flexibility, and decrease time-to-market.
Solution Capabilities
Advanced Constraint Modelling
Model advanced resource and inter-operation constraints including limits on the time between operations and if they can be extended.
Advanced Schedule Optimisation
Define additional manufacturing schedule optimisation rules to minimise changeover times, account for preferred sequencing, and campaigning.
BOM Level Planning
Calculate the impact of proposed purchase requirements from asset planning BOMs and export to an ERP system, Excel, etc. for action as needed.
Interactive Schedule Visualisation
View, search, and interact with schedules to track progress of orders, assess production performance, and provide up to the minute work-to-do lists.
Make-To-Order Planning
Evaluate effects of future demand changes and quickly assess if it is possible to meet new requirements of your manufacturing operation.
Operations & Detailed Scheduling
Implement closed-loop scheduling between the production planning and MES systems with detailed scheduling based on business rules and on real-time information about equipment status and capabilities.
Order Based Multi-Constraint Scheduling
Create order based manufacturing schedules and apply rankings or weightings to prioritise the orders. Base schedules on availability of resources, additional constraints, and the materials required.
Advanced Material Handling
Implement customer-specific rules to account for how materials are to be managed and consumed
Assembly Process Visualisation
Visualise the production process from raw materials through to finished goods and sales orders, including material dependencies to help identify where shortages will occur.
Development Environment
Access and alter the database schema as required to solve specific scheduling problems and create custom data manipulation tools for use with the workflow engine.
Interactive Schedule Visualisation
Display the master machine's Production Schedule as stock and capacity graphs. Easily edit it and visualise the changes reflected in linked plots and grids.
Make-To-Stock Planning
Generate accurate and achievable master production schedules (MPS) considering rough cut capacity, pack forward figures, target days of stock cover, manufacturing preferences, minimum and re-order quantities, re-order multiples and product shelf life. Production capacity can be specified as a quantity, duration or weight. By using the Preactor calendar system capacity, production capacity can be varied over time. The capacity available then limits the production volume created in each period.
Solution Capabilities
Digitalisation is a key concept to help manufacturers implementing Lean and Agile manufacturing processes and is critical to your long term success. Our APS solutions targeted at Electronics Manufacturers provide a suite of tools that helps planners, manufacturing line operators and management to work together to optimize production processes within the digital enterprise to increase efficiency, flexibility and time-to market.
Model advanced resource constraints and advanced inter-operation constraints including limits on the time between operations and if they can be extended.
Implement customer specific rules to account for how materials are to be managed and consumed.
Define additional manufacturing schedule optimization rules to minimizing changeover times, account for preferred sequencing, and campaigning.
Visualise the production process from raw materials through to finished goods and sales orders including material dependencies to help identify where shortages will occur.
Calculate the impact of proposed purchase requirements from asset planning BOMs and export to an ERP system, Excel, etc. for action as needed.
Access and alter the database schema as required to solve specific scheduling problems and create custom data manipulation tools for use with the workflow engine.
View, search, and interact with schedules to track progress of orders, assess production performance, and provide up to the minute work-to-do lists.
Display the Master machine Production Schedule as stock and capacity graphs. Easily edit it and visualize the changes reflected in linked plots and grids.
Evaluate effects of future demand changes and quickly assess if it is possible to meet new requirements of your manufacturing operation.
Generate accurate and achievable master production schedules (MPS) considering rough cut capacity, pack forward figures, target days of stock cover, manufacturing preferences, minimum and maximum re-order quantities, re-order multiples and product shelf life.
Production capacity can be specified as a quantity, duration or weight. By using the Preactor calendar system capacity, production capacity can be varied over time. The capacity available then limits the production volume created in each period.
Implement closed-loop scheduling between the production planning and MES systems with detailed scheduling based on business rule sand on real-time information about equipment status and capabilities.
Create order based manufacturing schedules and apply rankings or weightings to prioritize the orders. Base schedules on availability of resources, additional constraints, and the materials required.