When a product only has a shelf life of a few days, no process step can be too late – from the receipt of raw materials to delivery. Whether fresh products, short shelf lives, strict hygiene standards or changing recipes: food production is more dynamic and demanding than ever. The growing number of variants and smaller batch sizes in particular make planning more difficult. Added to this are changes at short notice, for example due to raw material shortages or volatile best-before dates.
“Even small delays – and even more so unplanned downtime – can have a direct impact on quality, traceability and delivery reliability. Planning errors quickly have far-reaching consequences. It is crucial to be able to identify bottlenecks at an early stage, synchronize processes and adjust planning in real time,” explains Heike Wilson, Managing Director of DUALIS GmbH IT Solution.
Multi-resource planning – flexible despite numerous influencing factors
Consistent planning is essential. The APS solution (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) GANTTPLAN from DUALIS supports this with automated multi-resource planning. Among other things, the system takes into account all relevant restrictions resulting from best-before dates and incorporates them directly into scheduling. At the same time, the software creates transparency regarding stocks of raw, auxiliary and packaging materials along the entire supply chain. This ensures that only approved and quality-tested batches are used in production.
The topic of resource conservation is also becoming increasingly important – not only with regard to ecological goals, but also in terms of economic efficiency. GANTTPLAN APS provides support here with, among other things, bottleneck management for intermediate products, capacity smoothing of seasonal peaks and demand-oriented scheduling. In this way, overproduction can be avoided. Various scenarios can be simulated and evaluated using rolling sales planning. The system shows in real time what effects alternative strategies have on set-up times and stock levels, for example.
With GANTTPLAN APS, production planning is based on the resources and capacities actually available as well as individually defined parameters and target values. Production orders can be automatically or manually scheduled, postponed, fixed or released in the graphical control station. Plant utilization is displayed on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Deviations from the plan are immediately visible and feedback from production is automatically fed back into the planning process.
“This allows companies to remain agile even in the event of last-minute changes or machine breakdowns,” says Heike Wilson. “At the same time, GANTTPLAN significantly reduces planning effort and costs. This frees up time for strategic planning tasks.”
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Further links
👉 www.dualis-it.de
Photo: pixabay
