S-Plan APS
Product Overview
S-Plan is an Advanced Planning system. It is designed to generate a finite-capacity schedule very quickly, but particularly at the time of order placement or capacity reservation. It schedules and sequences orders based on user-defined scheduling rules that consider personnel, material, and stock or work-in-progress inventory (WIP) availability as well as equipment constraints. S-Plan also contains advanced optimisation modules using patent-pending technology to create optimised schedules. Production is scheduled in a manner consistent with business aims, which may include customer service, production costs, production efficiency and stock levels. For more information click here to see the S-Plan 2-page brochure or read below; even more information is available in our White Papers section (registration required).
“The time savings are tremendous, almost better than the waste savings! I can now concentrate on improving customer service.”
David Long, Scheduler, bpx films (Houston)
S-Plan has been implemented in various industries including pulp and paper, textiles, metal, printing, converting and plastic film. Customers consistently experience productivity increases of up to 25 percent and late orders down to a few percent. S-Plan's schedules can increase throughput, reduce stock levels, improve manpower utilization and minimize overrun. In addition, you will be able to reduce delivery lead times, strengthen customer relationships, prioritize orders and respect promised delivery dates.
A manufacturing execution system (MES), if present, may be used to update the status of the live orders in real-time. Orders typically arrive through the order processing system to S-Plan to generate schedules. These schedules are then communicated to the operators on the shop floor, either electronically or in printed form.
S-Plan has been implemented in many environments and successfully integrated with a number of external systems.
Product Modules
Campaign Manager, S-Plan's block scheduling module, defines and manages repetitive production cycles by allocating orders to production runs based on product specifications, existing committed orders and manufacturing capacity.
Campaign Manager is ideal for companies which have long term planning and want to keep well organized their production ahead, complying with their customer requirements.
Allocate order either with the chart editor or with the Gantt editor. Planners may do it manually or let the S-Plan engine search for the orders matching the filters of every run and allocate them automatically.
The Run Optimiser adds an additional dimension of sophistication to the traditional block scheduling approach by intelligently re-evaluating the grade cycle each time a new order or reservation is accepted and by balancing the grade change cost with customer service requirements to arrive at an optimal schedule.
The Materials Manager includes ancillary materials (e.g. printing inks, packaging material, chemicals and coatings) as a constraint within the optimization process by maintaining current and projected inventory of these materials and generating re-order requests when appropriate.
S-Plan's Inventory Manager takes the ERP's accurate view of current inventory one step further. It creates a forward projection based on orders and manufacturing schedules by allowing orders or reservations to be satisfied from finished or semi-finished inventory rather than through a new production order. The Inventory Manager recognizes the possibility of re-processing and/or product substitution and includes these as options within the optimization process.
CTP Manager is the must have module for all the companies willing to take the customer service to the utter level and reach total customer satisfaction.
The CTP Manager provides a true real-time capable to promise facility for use at order entry or for customer services representatives who are remotely connected.
Developed in conjunction with Drewsen Spezialpapiere, this functionality allows the reservation (and gradual release) of production capacity for different market segments. This is a yield management mechanism that can, for example, turn away business, keeping capacity in reserve for better opportunities.
S-Plan APS: Integration Manager
The Integration Server uses industry standard messaging techniques and published interfaces to manage the flow of information between Greycon's applications and other systems such as ERP, MES and SCM.
