Production Planning
Realistic capacity and production planning is key for any manufacturing operations. Poor capacity planning will lead to bottlenecks, probable delays in customer deliveries, and potentially lost sales. The planning of interrelated manufacturing processes is a complex task, as the optimal production plan should not only be feasible and free of bottlenecks, but should also strive to minimize cost.
Key Questions
- What are the potential bottlenecks at each stage of the manufacturing process, due to ‘ramp-ups’ and line / tooling availability?
- What is the cost optimal way (more shifts, additional tooling, rerouting, line transfer etc.) to resolve the bottlenecks to produce a feasible global production plan?
- More shifts, additional lines or tooling, alternative supply points, line transfers or other adjustments?
Production Planning and SimFlex
SimFlex offers a rich set of features for accurate modeling of available capacity and actual usage. SimFlex can consider real-world issues affecting capacity, such as operating hours, public holidays, changing number of shifts, cycle times (including ramp-up trends), batch times, production lines and special tooling. Using the simulation capabilities of SimFlex, the capacity impact of an updated forecast can be checked, and bottlenecks occurring at any stage in the manufacturing process can be easily identified. Manual adjustments can then be made or optimization methods used to eliminate bottlenecks, resulting in a feasible and cost optimal production plan.
Capacity Deployment
The launch of a new product typically necessitates investments in specific equipment or tooling. This type of investment is often highly expensive and comes with a long lead-time. At the same time, the demand forecast can be inaccurate, including seasonal peaks. Investing in sufficient capacity to match the peak demand is not often financially viable, so as an alternative, inventories can be ‘pre-built’, ahead of demand. The objective of capacity deployment optimization is to optimally balance the supply chain in terms of capacity investments and inventory holding cost.
Key Questions
- What is the optimal trade-off between inventory holding cost and capacity investments?
- How much capacity should be in place at each manufacturing site / supplier?
- When should the capacity be ramped up?
- Should the pre-built stock be kept closer to the marketplace or closer to the point of supply?
- Does is make sense to expedite shipments during peak periods, if doing so leads to savings in capacity investments?
Capacity Deployment and SimFlex
SimFlex uses a combination of simulation, optimization and artificial intelligence to find the levels of inventory capacity that minimizes investments but provides the required flexibility to fulfill customer requirements. The result is a capacity plan for the whole supply chain: where, when and how much capacity should be in place.