The Benefits of Orchestrate Production Scheduling and Planning Software

Orchestrate production scheduling software provides a user friendly, value for money, planning and scheduling solution for developing key business targets - from Supply Chain Optimisation (SCO) to Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) for the shop floor. It provides a realistic alternative to using complex ERP modules or simplified spreadsheets.

In a competitive market sector, there is a constant, high amount of pressure to execute a continuous improvement strategy. From the top level, businesses must constantly assess their supply chain planning, regularly reviewing which factory units or which production lines are necessary. At the production level, businesses must constantly measure factory performance to schedule and manage the factory as effectively as possible. The necessity to plan and systematically review the plan's underlying assumptions, has never been more paramount.

However, this drive for constant improvement is made increasingly difficult by one key factor - the scarcity of effective planning tools. Despite the industry wide adoption of ERP systems, when it comes down to planning and scheduling most businesses find wide gaps in their central system functionality. Most businesses acknowledge that this problem exists. An assessment of any recent IT industry survey, will reveal that businesses are either aiming to squeeze more out of their existing systems, or looking for answers outside of their existing, internal systems.

The end result is that although they have made largescale investments in IT, key planning and scheduling activities are still performed by hand on a planning board or using a simple spreadsheet. Spreadsheets can quickly become overcomplicated and difficult for anyone else but the author to understand and it can begin to take an increasingly longer amount of time to produce next week's plan.

Despite the problems with this approach, managers are under the impression that specialist planning modules are excessively complex in terms of integration and application, offer poor value for money and that the less tailored planning systems are inappropriate.

Problems with spreadsheet systems often include:

• a tendency to be over complicated
• the requirement for a specialist user
• time consuming
• lack of plan visibility

People continue to use these methods because:

• there is no perceived cost advantage in a state of the art, specialist planning module
• the less specifically tailored planning systems are not appropriate for the job
• features are required that do not exist in planning systems

Orchestrate planning and scheduling software reverses this argument. Production Modelling has produced a cost-effective and user friendly solution that can specifically assist any buisness in numerous areas of planning and scheduling.

With the latest version of Orchestrate, we have developed a solution that offers a viable alternative.

Production Modelling’s Advanced Planning and Scheduling software solution, Orchestrate, helps Verna Group with both strategic and day-to-day capacity planning.

Vernagroup is an outstanding Bolton-based company with a mission to be a leading company, globally, in supplying premier medical pulp products, macerators and associated products and services to the healthcare industry sector worldwide. Their state of the art manufacturing processes are vital in the delivery of the most cost effective products to a competitive market sector in all five continents. Orchestrate planning and scheduling software has transformed the management and control of production - a coordinated and streamlined implementation in next to no time.

Steve Brownlee, IT Director with Vernagroup, had this to say:

“What used to take a whole day for a planner can now be accomplished in twenty minutes. That doesn’t just mean eliminating the hassle, it means we can afford to run alternative scenarios, knowing that built-in KPI alerts will keep us on track.”

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