Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS)

Plan against the production calendars, shifts, breaks, holidays, and efficiencies your shop actually runs on, so updated operation dates, sequencing, and material impacts surface as you schedule.

Use rough-cut capacity planning (RCCP) to plan, monitor, and manage work center, machine, tool, and labor capacity. Finite scheduling considers operation durations based on crew sizes and labor efficiency.

RCCP schedules open production orders against finite capacity constraints. Optionally, the orders selected can be released. Orders are loaded and scheduled in sequence based on priority, constraint dates, and production order numbers. The availability of material is considered, including supply orders such as purchase orders, transfer orders, or component production orders. Planners may exclude planning orders from RCCP to focus only on actual production orders.

Use Advanced Planning and Scheduling to determine how many units of an item will be available by a specified date or calculate availability dates for a quantity of items based on finite capacity constraints, material availability, and vendor lead times.

Use filters to locate production orders by sales order, scheduling status, and other criteria. Identify work center and machine capacity with built-in histograms. The color-coded schedule makes it easy to identify production orders and operations.

Visualize your production schedule with a graphical view of production order schedules by work center and machine. Visual scheduling enables users to view scheduled operations against work centers and machines for individual production orders or all orders simultaneously.

Rerun the schedule as priorities change, spend less time rebuilding it in spreadsheets, and have more confidence when someone asks where their order stands.

Utilize work center and machine dispatch reports for a clear view of scheduled production orders and operations. View reports identifying required resources for scheduled production orders.

Firm schedules to lock in planned production operations for work centers and machines.

Improve scheduling precision by defining finish, move, and queue times for manufacturing operations that require cooling, drying, movement to upstream operations (such as outsourced manufacturing services), and other expected non-production scheduling time.

Adjust constraint dates and priorities and firm schedules from the visual schedule board.

Schedulers, planners, and plant managers frequently encounter scheduling challenges that result in inefficiencies and production delays. With work center summaries and master views, teams gain a unified view of production orders, enabling them to track capacity, operational schedules, and the progress of dependent child orders. This clarity empowers schedulers, planners, and customer service teams to quickly identify delays and make informed decisions to keep production on track.

Gain insights into production schedules with real-time data from the shop floor feeding role-based dashboards, live Generic Inquiries, and actionable Business Events for push notifications when scheduling issues require immediate action. AI Assistant shows whether active production is trending late, on time, or early and surfaces the released orders most likely to finish late or run over cost.