Detailed production planning is a fundamental pillar of production. The process has several levels, which can be covered in different ways, even with different solutions. From raw material planning to fine programming, QAD Enterprise Applications lead users so that they can create effective, precise and optimal plans.
Capacity Planning
Effective use of available resources is a priority for manufacturing companies, capacity planning of machinery, machine groups, human resources or material handling equipment are equally important. An optimal plan and optimal use based on these are key factors in the flexibility of a company.
The Capacity Planning solution of QAD provides effective support for this planning process, with long term and annual capacity planning to provide leaders with useful information. After that more precise calculations for shorter time units are also possible.
Production Planning
As a result of capacity planning, material requirement planning (MRP) and material availability calculations, a plan is devised as to what and how we should put in production, with a view to optimal use and available raw material parts. The solution provides recommendations for production tasks aimed at satisfying customer needs.
According to the critical points of the planning process, visual production scheduling tools can be selected to ensure optimal use of capacities, and a complex planning interface is available for the effective coordination of needs, supplies and resources.
Planning modules handle the needs on the different sites of the company in a coordinated way, and ensure that successive processes are correctly scheduled. Implementation processes send feedback, so planning is always well-founded and accurate.
MSW - Master Scheduling Workbench
The QAD Master Scheduling Workbench solution is designed to support short term production planning. The module has an integrated interface to display available daily capacity and load for production lines, the quantities of batch codes scheduled for production, and demand and supply data for the specific batch code as used by the MRP.
Schedules for specific batch codes are presented in a table, which can also be modified directly on the interface. In this case both production line load and expected inventory levels are immediately recalculated, and if a shortage of capacity or stock is expected, the system uses visual elements to highlight critical points where intervention is necessary. The interface also displays the production orders planned by the MRP, and single orders or multiple orders for a given period can be approved and incorporated in the production line schedule.
Once daily plans have been devised, shift-level schedules can be created and also the order of production within a shift can be set. Based on these data, users get an overview of the required parts to be built in, and it is easy to find if, with a given plan and considering the expected incoming items, a shortage of parts is to be expected.
Once the schedule is created and saved, data immediately appear in the QAD production line schedule, and from there they can be reported with browses or the Reporting Framework solution, so paper-based shift schedules can also be created and used in operative production management.
on-PLAN - interactive and visual fine programming
With on-PLAN, taking into consideration the finite capacities of production equipment, machine groups, machinery and instruments, and the availability of human resources, production tasks can be planned optimally, displayed visually, and modified simply and spectacularly. As a result, it can be checked any time if orders are on schedule and will be completed by the deadline.
Detailed information can be gained on every activity in the plant through the interactive, graphic user interface, so current and relevant data are available to decision makers. On-PLAN is more than just a useful tool - with on-PLAN you can plan production effortlessly.
