Optimize asset utilization while increasing customer responsiveness.
Chemicals manufacturers are under pressure to conform to stringent government regulation, maximize output within limited production capacity, and respond quickly to customer demands. Add to this the need for new products, formulas and packaging options. The myriad of requirements makes production scheduling increasingly important, difficult, and time-consuming.
How do you:
- Quickly and easily create updated weekly production schedules that will satisfy demand and safety stock objectives while taking the latest formula and packaging changes into account
- Create production campaigns that increase production output by minimizing cleanouts
- Ensure that important quality and process constraints are taken into consideration in the planning process to minimize scheduling errors that can cause quality risks
Your planning and scheduling system will:
- Create production schedules that take your latest forecast, order, and safety stock requirements into account with the click of a button thus maximizing your order fill rates
- Provide you visibility of any expected stock-outs where capacity is insufficient, giving you the tools to easily re-plan, make "drag and drop" changes, and consider alternatives in "what-if" scenarios
- Make sure that all constraints in your production process are considered including: equipment capacity and selection, tooling requirements, required sequencing rules, etc.
Key Software Features for Chemicals scheduling:
- Ability to model run rates by product by resource
- Continuous flow rules that prevent spoilage between production steps
- Inter-resource conveyance constraints that limit resource-to-resource material movement based on physical material handling equipment
- Drag-and-drop scheduling of orders with immediate view of the impact on resulting inventory
- Intermediate storage constraints that limit production based on the availability of inventory storage in tanks, bins or other containers
- Shared-input constraints when one resource feeds multiple downstream resources thus requiring that the secondary resources run compatible products at all points in time
- Customizable rules to prevent accidental scheduling of products in unacceptable sequences that lead to cross-contamination
- Batching of requirements into efficient campaigns that also take demand timing into consideration