INDUSTRY WATCH
HOW SOFTWARE CAN MAKE
YOUR BUSINESS SCHEDULING
MORE EFFICIENT
Specialist software can have an enormous
impact on the profitability of your businesses
by improving the efficiency of your scheduling
operation. To increase responsiveness to your
customers it is worth considering moving away
from spreadsheets and towards advanced
scheduling tools. Roch Gauthier, Senior Director,
Product Management, AspenTech, writes about
the importance of plant scheduling.
P
roduction scheduling is one of
the most important disciplines
within manufacturing.
Crucially, the scheduler is the
linchpin to customer satisfaction
and operational efficiency. Daily
decisions made in this vital function
influence outcomes, including what
to make and when, which ultimately
impacts customer orders and
bottom-line profitability. fulfilling order commitment promises,
manufacturing cost savings and
optimised inventory management.
When business leaders look to gain
every possible competitive advantage,
scheduling is a key area that needs
to be given greater precedence. With
every corrective and timely adjustment
to the manufacturing schedule,
the scheduler delivers enormous
benefits, including high levels of
customer service and responsiveness, The continual management of
constant change places tremendous
pressure on schedulers to ensure they
keep the operation running according
to plan and meet internal and
external commitments.
www.intelligentcio.com
Frequently fluctuating production,
restrictions in material transport
and storage, unforeseen customer
demands, changes to plans and
complexity are just some of the daily,
around the clock challenges for plant
schedulers today.
With the increasing complexity in
today’s market, executives need to view
scheduling as a vital part of the business
decision-making process and elevate its
status within the organisation.
Investment in the discipline and
empowering schedulers with specialist
cutting-edge software has shown to
reap an enormous uplift in production
efficiencies and overall profitability
whilst simultaneously driving
improvements in customer service levels.
What-if?
Many organisations experience
late shipments and production
problems due to poor scheduling.
Detailed schedules can be difficult
to create and update when using the
wrong tools and in many situations,
problems occur at the scheduling
level due to an inability to easily
visualise the immediate cause-and-
effect consequences of schedule
changes and their longer term ripple
effects into the future.
Schedulers need to be able to react
quickly, consider multiple ‘what-if’
scenarios and adjust their production
schedules accordingly in order to
keep production aligned to the plan
and achieve customer and internal
INTELLIGENTCIO
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