Why an APS Solution is Key to Meeting Manufacturing Demands

Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready.

The point hits deeply when you’re in the manufacturing industry, where there’s so much to do in so little time. Enter advanced planning and scheduling (APS), which uses algorithms to help you carry the load, and APS software, which you can automate. 

Advanced planning and scheduling systems usually provide integration capabilities with a manufacturing execution system (MES) for production plans and integrate with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to exchange information.

APS benefits users by reducing production setup times, helping with resource management, and giving accurate due dates to customers. APS tools provide a planner that allows users to schedule faster and stay on top of tasks. The planner offers views such as work orders, resources, resource utilization, and materials, inventories. Using the planner, you can also use drag-and-drop features to move orders to new work centers.

What are the functions of APS?

APS offers an accurate forecast of orders, support, and decision-making increases profitability, and influences production operations in a big way.

APS is a pillar for decisions in the workforce, resource capacity, and the factory. It gives manufacturers the tools to decide what needs to be made, where and when, and the resources required.

While the above applies to advanced planning, advanced scheduling considers the availability of the resources to ensure that the model of the manufacturing environment gets captured. Advanced scheduling uses intelligence to schedule orders, and in addition, it provides support for overtime, order prioritization, split production batches, due date negotiation, and order processing.

Elements of APS

APS has specific components that are very crucial, such as money and material. 

Money

Money is an essential component of APS. It allows companies to obtain the resources they need to function. Without money, the organization cannot purchase materials, employ a workforce, or purchase equipment.

Material

Materials are the items that a business uses to produce the product. Materials include raw materials such as steel, aluminum, or other natural resources used to make a finished product. 

Workforce

This encompasses all the workers, regardless of how they contribute. This could be a factory worker to a C-level executive. Companies rely on these workers to generate success. 

Machines

Both simple and complex machines automate many business processes, so employees finish their tasks quickly. Machines can automatically assemble products, optimize supply chain management, and even process work orders. Production is slower and less accurate without machines.

Methods

Businesses need to have effective methods to manage resources. This means having the necessary systems and processes to track inventory levels, handle quality, and meet delivery times. Strategies are essential to ensure a company can achieve its goals and objectives without hiccups.

Benefits of APS

Companies that use APS recover investments quickly and save money. From real-time visibility to advanced strategizing, APS provides a lot of benefits.

• Advanced synchronization: APS allows manufacturers to sync many resources, including complex machinery, workers, raw materials, and finished goods. APS automates this and removes the need for manual planning.
• Accessibility: All the information is easily accessible within APS, and the data provides high visibility and transparency. Everyone knows everything from the first step to manufacturing execution (ME).
• Shorter lead times: APS provides shorter lead times to ensure that customer demands happen on time. This also ensures that any production delays get communicated. By understanding the lead time needed for procurement or manufacturing, your orders arrive on time.
• Inventory schedules: APS helps you absorb supply chain time demand and tailor a production, purchase, and inventory plan to help keep up with the demand. You can also forecast inventory demand to ensure you stick to minimum stock requirements.
• Streamline operations: Streamlining production operations allows you to produce multiple products. Doing this also reduces the waste of resources.

What is advanced planning and scheduling software?

Advanced planning and scheduling software help manufacturers specify raw materials and gauge production capacity to balance the market demand and factory capacity to function well.

APS software solutions help companies plan and schedule manufacturing based on available materials and the factory's capability. The solution tracks costs involved in the production process gives information about the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), and improves the materials requirement planning (MRP).

APS systems help users craft the best production schedule while minimizing downtime and errors to a large extent. A good APS solution provides visual schedules and Gantt charts to view the entire manufacturing process, which can help determine the best start time, machine to use, and staffing stock.

Components of APS software

APS software has five primary components that are common to all solutions. These are the five components of APS software:

• Transportation planning: Planning for transportation is the work that goes into supply chain planning for the utilities required to transport people and products from one step to the next. It is a collaborative process that seeks to identify the transportation requirements to gauge the transportation model's efficiency, cost, and structure.

• Demand planning: Planning for demand is being aware of what the need would be like in the future and being prepared for it. It lets you know what current and future customers or prospects want to buy from you. It also enables the manufacturing facilities to understand what to produce. To avoid potential bottlenecks, demand planning is made through historical sales data analysis, statistical forecasts, and client surveys.
• Production planning: The process ensures that an operation's raw materials, workers, and other resources are sufficiently prepared to produce products according to a schedule. Production plans serve as a blueprint for a company’s production activities and establish activities that must be completed to achieve targets.
• Production scheduling: Production scheduling is the process of arranging, handling, and optimizing the work involved to increase production efficiency. Production scheduling takes cues from existing demand to create a schedule that the production team can follow. APS with production scheduling helps with inventory reduction, reduced changeover time, smaller scheduling efforts, and handling labor load.
• Distribution planning: Distribution planning is used to plan orders in a supply chain. This component of APS software takes cues from demand forecasts to understand the inventory requirements based on different time frames. This component handles the demand for a future period with the already available inventory.

Best APS software

APS software helps manufacturers completely optimize the allocation of raw materials and capacities to meet demand. APS applies to companies with a complex manufacturing process that requires advanced planning functionalities. While it benefits the manufacturing department of a company, it also helps other departments, such as inventory management and procurement.

To be placed in G2’s APS software category, a product needs to:

• Collect and input demand data from multiple systems
• Track the availability of raw materials and predict production capacity
• Craft production schedules based on the demand and limiting factors
• Optimize production schedules whenever demand changes
• Let managers convert plans into actionable schedules
• Deliver production plans and programs for different locations

* This data was pulled from G2 on July 28, 2022. Some reviews may be edited for clarity.

1. Acumatica

Acumatica delivers continuity of operations to growing small and mid-market organizations. Designed for a mobile world, Acumatica easily integrates with any of your favorite collaboration platforms.

What users like:

“The most helpful part of Acumatica is the ability to get at the data. This comes into play for daily processing between staff, where one person can enter information and attach backup, and another can get the details on the related project without needing to ask for it. Being able to drill down on the information from screens you are familiar with also gives staff independence without needing to learn how someone else does their job.

The ability to structure reports and extract data through tools like generic inquiries also allows one to get the information out in the format you need for outside purposes like uploading data to a bank for positive payor payments or providing details for the annual audit.”

- Acumatica Review, Anna A.

What users dislike:

“The Field Service module is behind in integration with the core modules since it is only a few years old. Stronger dispatching capabilities are needed--the "Calendar Board" should be the best tool in the module for dispatchers/service coordinators, but it is currently too basic.”

- Acumatica Review, User in Facilities Services

2. L2L Smart Manufacturing Platform

L2L Smart Manufacturing Platform is a literally unique intelligent manufacturing platform for global manufacturers looking to achieve world-class performance by consistently refining plant management. It has four separate modules that help manufacturers improve production across their operations while reducing waste.

What users like:

“The documentation is extensive. The support team is rapid and will help you figure it out or even pass things along to their developers if necessary. And the power of their APIs allows me to do more than just integrations, I can develop custom features and functions, expanding the baseline functionality and feature set.”

- L2L Smart Manufacturing Platform Review, Justin F.

What users dislike:

“I would like to be able to move cards while using the Ekanban Planner screen. Currently only able to move cards using the calendar view.”

- L2L Smart Manufacturing Platform Review, Jason G.

3. AIMMS Prescriptive Analytics Platform

AIMMS Prescriptive Analytics Platform uses the scalable approach for your business’ modeling requirements. Their customers use AIMMS to customize hundreds of solutions that lead to lower costs and a stronger bottom line. From production planning and scheduling to maintenance planning to sourcing and blending, if you’re looking to grow your business, this is the software for you.

What users like:

“Well-developed constraint-based scheduling functionality. Efficient interaction with a variety of solvers. From a development perspective, the integrated GUI allows for easy evaluation of model output and troubleshooting.”

- AIMMS Prescriptive Analytics Platform Review, Katherine G.

What users dislike:

“Building and maintaining the tool is a specialized activity; therefore, we outsourced this to Ortec (as a partner of AIMMS.) Although Ortec did an excellent job building the tool, it needed more than anticipated resources to support this, including testing.”

- AIMMS Prescriptive Analytics Platform Review, Aron W.

4. Simio Production Scheduling

Simio Production Scheduling allows you to build a simulation model that replicates the intricacies within your company’s system.

What users like:

“The most important part I liked about Simio is that it can help people to reflect on the real situation. What I mean is that people can get the idea and vision of what the problem is. People can look at the simulation in Simio to solve the problem.”

- Simio Production Scheduling Review, Yangyi L.

What users dislike:

“Lack of training with certain product parts makes getting help a painful and time-consuming experience. Also, with so many features, especially without enough training, Simio can get overwhelming.”

- Simio Production Scheduling Review, Utkarsh A.

5. Katana Manufacturing ERP

Katana Manufacturing ERP lets you see your company’s operations in real-time. Its features make sure you’ve got eyes on inventory and manufacturing management, batch tracking, and reporting services. With Katana, it’s easy to automate resource allocation and integration in one visual platform.

What users like:

“They have thought of everything you should need, and if there's something more you need, you can simply integrate it to add to it. By far, the most beneficial of all of Katana's features is its integration and connectivity capabilities. We currently utilize its APIs and webhooks to integrate all of our systems together, and not only do they work flawlessly, but they have also proven to be reliable.”

- Katana Manufacturing ERP Review, Raees R.

What users dislike:

“The price is high compared to others. If the program is closed, the data is not automatically saved; loading a large number of products to the inventory gets a little slow.”

- Katana Manufacturing ERP Review, Mohit G.

APS makes life easy

With so many daily tasks, APS makes life easier for all the parties involved in supply chain management. It takes care of everything right from production planning to forecasting demand. Businesses of all sizes should adopt APS solutions to reap all its benefits in their software exhibit.

Wondering what else you can predict to prepare for the future? Learn more about inventory management.