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Production Scheduling Software for Manufacturers and Precision Engineers |
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The PlannerCase Study 2:Sharp Corporation chooses the The PlannerSharp Corporation is a U.S.-based first class packaging company catering to the pharmaceutical, personal care, and nutraceutical industries. The full-range of packaging capabilities includes blister packaging - Sharp has the industry's largest blister packaging capacity - pouch/sachet/packette packaging, carded blisters, bottling, and transdermal patches. Sharp's scheduling issues with ERPSharp completed a successful ERP implementation in October, 1999 using the Manufacturing, Distribution, and Financial modules of an ERP system. As is the case in most ERP packages it used infinite capacity scheduling logic in its planning architecture. Dave Bono, the scheduling manager, was still scheduling the old-fashioned way using a manual scheduling board. He had to take new orders out of the ERP system and place them on to the planning board, and manually update Work In Process. Daily scheduling meetings had to be held around the board. "You can just imagine the work involved in updating the board when machines went down or when jobs had to be rescheduled," he says. Dave was the focal point for all scheduling issues. He felt as if he spent more time on the phone, answering questions, than he did in actual scheduling. And he recognized the need to automate the process. "I knew it was just a matter of time before I missed placing a job on the board," he says. Dave knew that if the company were to grow it was going to have to more effectively manage the scarce resources of machine and labor. He also realized that if he could effectively provide customers with accurate ship dates it would give Sharp a significant lead over its competitors. Sharp chooses The PlannerPaul Spaulding, the IT manager, wanted an integrated scheduling solution."We didn't want to write, support, and maintain an interface between our ERP software, and our scheduling software," he says. "We simply didn't have the resources to take on a project of that magnitude. You not only have to maintain the interface during the development phase, you also have to maintain the interfaces throughout the product's life cycle which includes major- and minor-upgrades of the ERP software." "Besides," Paul says, "We are in the manufacturing business, not the software business. We wanted to focus on our core competency." Implementation 1. The Conshohocken, PA, plantSharp implemented ThePlanner in the Conshohocken plant first deciding to develop a successful model to roll out to the other sites. This approach was recommended by the Planner consultants. The Planner consultants act as the coaches believing the most effective way of implementing The Planner in multi-plant implementations is the 'train the trainer' approach. "Implementation went rather well, once some custom
enhancements were made," said scheduling manager Dave Bono. A major part of the implementation was ensuring that data that was needed for scheduling - such as routings and rates - were accurate. There was no need to pay attention to that information in the past because everything was offline. "The initial load of the data was tedious but was necessary to allow us to start with a plan that mirrored what we were currently using," said Dave. Implementation 2. The West Caldwell, NJ, plantBefore the new ERP implementation the West Caldwell facility was running an old version of BPCS. The planning function was performed using information from BPCS and other sources in Excel spreadsheets. Planning requirements included scheduling a variety of different types of machines, while moving them between different production rooms to meet job-specific requirements including temperature and humidity control, laminar air flow, Class 2 security, overall square footage, validation requirements and so on. In addition it was necessary to configure combinations of machines for some orders and separate the machines for others. It was also necessary for The Planner to provide time in the master production schedule for order reconciliation and customer releases. And because of tight lot control requirements there had to be a direct and visible link between the work order for a specific lot and the specific sales order line for the same lot. Furthermore, the scheduling process had to be flexible, providing for quick schedule changes to meet customers' ever-changing requirements. And even though the plant does comprehensive production scheduling on a weekly basis, daily schedule changes are essential to the full servicing of its customers' needs. The futureGiven the The Planner's multi-viewing capability the company is looking at possibilities of sharing schedules between plants and better utilizing the overall corporate capacities. The need for real-time data collection is a natural by-product of the The Planner implementation. Sharp is now looking at some solutions. The company is also looking at ways to use data from The Planner to better forecast shipments and cash. What Sharp people are saying about The Planner The following commentary was provided by Craig Meibach, Materials Manager, West Caldwell plant. During the implementation it quickly became apparent that the basic ERP software provided some constraining factors for scheduling at Sharp. As an aid to ERP, in addressing our scheduling requirements, we implemented the Planner software. Work centers have been established in ERP system for each type of machine along with a QA work center. A QA routing operation has been created for each job and the necessary reconciliation and release times included. A machine list was developed in the Planner containing the machine number, work center and room number. After MRP runs in the ERP system work orders are firmed and imported into the Planner. Once in the Planner, the order is scheduled to a specific machine. If a machine is moved to a different room, the machine list is updated and all associated orders follow it to the new room. Orders can also be re-scheduled to different machine / rooms as required. The order reconciliation / release time is also scheduled out at this point to ensure the entire production and release process meets the required ship date. At the end of each day work-order start and end dates scheduled in the Planner are exported to the ERP system. The export updates the ERP work order release and end dates thereby linking the Planner master production schedule to MRP. During the next MRP run the new work order dates serve to align all purchase requirements to the master production schedule. In addition to the Planner graphic screen we have used Crystal™ reports to create a comprehensive production report incorporating data from both the Planner and ERP system. This is a comprehensive report which links work orders to actual sales order delivery dates. It is used throughout the facility to manage and expedite orders through various departments and processes. The report prints in room number sequence and lists by work order: Work order # and ID #, Item # and item description, start date, work center end date, order quantity, quantity remaining, run hours remaining, lot #, sales order number, sales order due date, crew staffing and work order status. Going forward, we will be creating additional Crystal™ reports for reconciliation / release schedule, a sales forecast by month based on sales order due dates, and FG inventory projections based on order completion date vs. sales order due date. The benefits and advantages to SharpThe Planner has increased visibility of current production scheduling throughout the entire company, especially with its ability to put the plan out on our intranet. The Planner has given us the ability to do more accurate capacity planning than ERP allows. We can use data from orders that are currently in the ERP system and also include information from sales forecasts to get a picture of machine capacity going as far out into the future as we want to create orders for. Charts and graphs in plan view can also be used to measure capacity. Information is more reliable. By using a manual planning system that was not connected to our ERP system it was more likely that work orders would fall through the cracks and get lost between the ERP and the schedule. The potential for this increased with our current organization, which includes more planners. Easier to generate reports. Once data is manipulated and distributed, reports can be generated quickly and easily through Crystal™ reports. Easy to find work orders for specific items, products, etc. All you need to do is start typing a product description, a work order number, an item number, etc. With the prior systems you had to manually search a schedule board or report to find the order you were looking for. Some technical information
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