Manage your flow with Infor Production Scheduling
BROCHURE
Manage flow
Manufacturers who mix, blend, brew, cook, react, or distill have scheduling challenges that are different from those in other industries. Manufacturers with these challenges must be able to perform constraint-based scheduling to optimize product flow and resource capacity of vessels, tanks, and lines.
When this can be accomplished in a collaborative environment that allows everyone to work from the exact same schedules at the same time, it’s easier to optimize resources, maximize capacity, and minimize downtime. And with the ability to quickly and easily see key performance metrics, manufacturers can gain immediate access to the right information to improve schedule efficiency and make better decisions, faster. All of this can be possible with Infor® Production Scheduling.
With Infor Production Scheduling, manufacturers can manage constraint-based scheduling to optimize the capacity of resources like vessels, tanks, and lines, as well as product flow between them.
Synchronize operations
With the combined power of Production Scheduling’s constraint-based logic and optimization capabilities, manufacturers can simultaneously schedule and synchronize operations across all production lines, including any interdependencies, reducing downtime from setup and changeovers. Plus, with Infor’s more than 25 years of experience helping food, beverage, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and consumer goods, manufacturers can reduce production costs and improve on-time delivery performance.
Interactive Gantt chart with synchronized processes
Tank scheduling with inflow and outflow rates
Schedule more efficiently
Unlike conventional enterprise resource planning (ERP) planning software or assembly-based scheduling systems, Production Scheduling allows users to deal with recipes, by-products, co- products, and yield losses. Some of Production Scheduling’s unique capabilities can be used to manage the constraints of tank and silo capacity and the flow of product between them, including:
- Variable flow rates
- Fermentation and maturation constraints
- Storage restrictions
- Product-dependent filtration and filling constraints
- Floating bottlenecks
The system takes into account all batch-process manufacturing considerations, even shelf life, overlapping processes, and clean-in-place (CIP). This helps ensure products are scheduled in the most efficient, timely, and profitable manner to meet customer demand.
Respond rapidly to change
Customer demand is ever changing. Production Scheduling improves response time when unpredictable demands happen. With automated optimization techniques and an intuitive graphical planning board, the solution can be used to adjust schedules at a moment’s notice. With collaborative scheduling, everyone works from the same schedule and can see changes as they happen in real time. Enabling planners to collaboratively access and adjust schedules, gives them the flexibility to respond to multiple changes and reconcile scheduling conflicts between different production departments. Planners can make on-the-fly adjustments to ensure that production schedules are accurate and optimized for the most efficient flow and minimal downtime.
Drive performance improvements
Another way to help optimize resources is by improving the efficiency of a manufacturer’s production operations. Achieving that requires being able to measure performance, to determine what areas need the most improvement. With just a single click, users can access the Schedule Performance Dashboard, which provides a single-screen overview of real-time performance across the entire production operation, and includes color-coded order violations.
This allows planners to instantly gauge the impact of change on schedule performance and take the necessary actions to ensure the schedule aligns more closely with planning objectives. Users can dynamically measure performance metrics, such as the cost and duration of events, like:
- Production
- Changeovers
- Set up
- Downtime (including slack, idle, and CIP)
Enable visibility and collaboration
The need to share production information with colleagues throughout an organization, with suppliers, and even with customers, is increasingly important. Manufacturers can easily accomplish this by granting all of the necessary stakeholders with internet-based access to the complete Gantt chart view of production schedules, which includes information such as batch, process step, and specific order details.
This helps ensure that everyone has the most current and accurate information for critical decisions to improve customer service, maximize margins, and minimize loss due to spoilage. Users can also set personalized views of schedules that are targeted toward specific production operations. Additionally, Production Scheduling includes powerful, filtered search capabilities that allow users to quickly find specific line items.
With this increased visibility, manufacturers can gain total control of their plants and achieve measurable improvements in production, service, and profitability. And because users get solid information when they need it, they can make better decisions more quickly.
Experience bottom-line improvements
Customers who implemented Infor Production Scheduling have benefited from bottom-line improvements including:
- Increased on-time delivery performance by up to 5%
- Decreased lost time due to changeovers by as much as 30%
- Reduced cycle times by over 20%
- Reduced production costs by up to 10%
- Increased capacity utilization and throughput between 10% to 40%
With Infor Production Scheduling, manufacturers get the tools they need to optimize production resources, reduce costs, improve performance, and grow revenue.
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