Bottleneck Scheduler
Dr. Goldratt in his famous and widely accepted “Theory of Constraints" established that maximizing the throughput in a bottleneck operation increases the plant efficiency dramatically. Many advanced Enterprise Resource Planning Systems provide the functionalities to achieve this through advance planning. However, given their cost & complexity these are out of reach for many manufacturing companies. Bottleneck Scheduler from Solvop helps you to achieve efficient advance planning.
How does it help the production planners?
Bottleneck Scheduler helps the production planners in two ways:
1. Predictable Monthly Bottleneck Scheduling:
Master Production Schedules (MPS) and Material Requirement Planning (MRP) modules of an ERP generate a monthly plan. In some cases, planners have developed innovative spreadsheets to make these plans. This plan is then communicated to sales and management. The feasibility of this plan is at best checked at a gross level. Our Bottleneck Scheduler checks the load on the bottleneck stage and allocates it optimally to individual machines. The plans can be made considering the Overall Equipment Efficiency of individual machines at the bottleneck stage. It also considers changeover times and cycle times of each part on individual machines while making an optimal bottleneck plan. This plan can then be used to generate material requirements of upstream stages and plan the downstream operations in the ERP.
2. Efficient Short Term Rescheduling on the Bottleneck:
While utmost care is taken by the planners to generate monthly plans unpredictable events occur more frequently than not. Raw material supplies are delayed, machines break down, labor is absent and customers change priorities. How to respond to the situation on the bottleneck quickly and yet optimally is the most powerful feature of Bottleneck Scheduler. The latest machine availability, demand position and availability of inputs is to be fed to the planner and you get a revised plan at the click of a button.
How is it different from an ERP?
Most of the manufacturing companies use some kind of a package or home grown system for production planning. Yet they end up doing lot of work manually and generate gross level plans. Many limitations in the existing ERP systems are the reasons behind this which are successfully overcome by Solvop Bottleneck Scheduler. These are mentioned below:
1. Alternate routings: The bottleneck operation can have multiple machines. These could be identical or may have different capacities. An ERP considers the main routing for production planning. In case the machine in the main routing is overloaded other options have to be reviewed and changed manually. Solvop Bottleneck Scheduler considers all possible routings for the bottleneck and allocates parts to machines automatically. You get a machine loading chart for each day.
2. Tool considerations in planning: Tool availability is an important part of production planning. We may have ten machines but only 3 tools available for a part. Additionally, in some cases like Moulding and Casting the output depends on the cavities in the tool. In some Moulding processes the left hand and right hand mirror parts are made from a family mould in the same cycle. ERP ignores these aspects during planning and thus the plans become unrealistic in such situations. Solvop Bottleneck Scheduler considers availability of tools and their output per cycle based on cavities/family mould while making production plans. Production plans from Bottleneck Scheduler show tool deployments for each part every day.
3. Bottom up planning: An ERP does top down planning from demand to supply. Bottleneck Scheduler considers both demand and supply constraints while making the bottleneck plan.
Bottleneck Scheduler Plus
In a typical ERP, planning considers only rough cut capacity for creating a Master Production Schedule considering the capacity of the bottleneck. In reality the production is also constrained by availability of material in time. Bottleneck Scheduler Plus from Solvop considers material availability in addition to capacity and tools to make a fully feasible MPS.
Bottleneck Scheduler in use - Master Production Scheduling of Bearings Assembly
Master Production Scheduling in Die Casting
