As market demands become increasingly diverse and product life cycles shorten, businesses are adopting new production and operation methods and technological innovations. This has led to the prevalence of mass customization, where a wide variety of small-batch production has become the dominant production model in today's society. Unlike the mass production of the past, this current model of diverse, small-batch production places higher demands on supply chain collaboration: rapid response to customer needs, quick delivery, and closer coordination with suppliers. This objectively requires a more rapid and efficient planning system for coordination.

Most companies have already implemented or are in the process of implementing ERP and MES systems, completing information management in planning and production execution. However, the disconnect between demand planning and production execution has led to significant discrepancies between estimated and actual production capacity, as well as unreasonable allocation of demands and plans, and a lack of coordination between planning and execution processes. Companies are lacking an overall system for analysis, monitoring, and traceability.

The Fangtian APS Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) System is an automated, intelligent APS and scheduling system based on limited capacity. It helps enterprises quickly formulate optimized detailed production schedules that comply with various production constraints (people, machines, materials, methods, environment), meet planning objectives and strategies, shorten manufacturing lead times, reduce inventory, enhance on-time delivery performance, and effectively realize customer's profit growth.

Corporate Dilemma

With changing market conditions and increasing market competition, the variety of products is growing, and clients are demanding stricter delivery schedules. How to produce more products with fewer people, in less time, and with less inventory has become a key concern for businesses. Especially, as production scheduling, the "origin of manufacturing," its scientificity, efficiency, flexibility, and shareability have become increasingly prominent issues.

01. Management

We need to real-time monitor the discrepancies between estimated and actual production capacity, the rationality of demand and planning allocation, and the coordination between planning and execution processes. Currently, there is a lack of an overall system for analysis, monitoring, and traceability.

02. Order Processor

The purchasing clerk hopes to gain real-time insights into customers' order plans, production progress, and capacity status. Currently, there is a lack of a unified system platform, making it difficult for the clerk to obtain real-time information, accurately reply to customer inquiries about progress, or effectively promise delivery dates. Interdepartmental collaboration, information exchange, and interface management among purchasing clerk, planning, and procurement departments are insufficient in terms of accuracy and timeliness.

03. Planner

Manual Excel scheduling leads to high workload and low efficiency for planners; each planner schedules separately by process, requiring meetings for coordination to ensure balanced plans between processes, which is inefficient and prone to human errors (e.g., inadequate communication) leading to unreasonable plans. Additionally, manual scheduling heavily relies on the skills of personnel, their familiarity with the business, and their work attitude; planners cannot real-time analyze production capacity, actual completion, and production balance through the system.

04. Shop Floor Supervisor / Production Manager

We hope to know production schedules and load conditions in real-time through the system, so we can arrange for production preparations (such as mold preparation, material requisition and confirmation, personnel scheduling, etc.) in a timely or advance manner; the production supervisor is unable to promptly understand the achievement of plans, process balance, process bottlenecks (load), and abnormal situations through the system.

05. Inventory Control & Procurement

Currently, material requirement analysis is completed with the assistance of ERP, but it lacks close integration with production planning, making it impossible to accurately calculate material requirement planning and procurement needs through the system.

Therefore, companies must establish an enterprise planning management platform centered around APS planning, complemented by systems like ERP and MES, to provide robust application functions to meet the intelligent command and dispatch center for the company; drive the entire production operation to run more quickly and efficiently, shorten cycles, and enhance production capacity; respond swiftly to internal and external environmental changes, boost market competitiveness, and lay a solid foundation for the improvement of the company's overall profitability and the transformation of its overall operational model.

Primary Functions

The Fangtian APS Advanced Scheduling System is specifically designed to address pain points in the enterprise planning field. It can quickly respond to demands, conduct planning multiple times a day, and significantly enhance the efficiency of planning operations.

The Fangtian APS Advanced Scheduling Module is our system's most patented module, acting as the "main artery" for integrated intelligent manufacturing collaboration.

01. Detailed Production Schedule

By synchronously considering the constraints of various limited resource capabilities, and based on various predefined rules, the system utilizes systematic intelligent mathematical algorithms. Through repeated simulations, trials, optimizations, and calculations, it provides a relatively detailed production plan.

02. Rapid and Effective Response to Various Scenarios

Supports modes like order insertion and mixed full scheduling, enabling the establishment of various analysis scenarios for repeated simulations. You can make arbitrary changes to scheduling data within these scenarios, observe the resulting performance changes, and obtain comprehensive adjustment plans.

03. Automated Production Scheduling

Visual automated scheduling, based on set basic information and corresponding constraints, optimizes production sequence and enhances order delivery performance.

04. Visual Analysis Attempt

The system offers a variety of analysis and forecasting functionality interfaces, covering key indicators in areas such as resources, materials, personnel, and labor costs, presented in a graphical format to assist businesses in analyzing and controlling production from multiple angles.

Application Value

By implementing the APS system, the following issues can be addressed for the enterprise:

01. Delivery Time Met

Respond to customer orders more quickly, allowing you to promptly reply to customer inquiries, accurately commit to delivery timelines, and deliver orders on time, fostering a better business relationship with your clients.

02. Order Forecast

Through systematic modeling and dynamic capacity simulation in the workshop, we conduct long-term scheduling to accurately respond to delivery dates, better meet market demand, and enhance customer service capabilities.

03. Planning Compilation

The system supports full/semi-automatic/wizard scheduling modes. Businesses can achieve balanced production scheduling at the system level based on their needs and business rules, allowing for the quick creation of refined process plans. This reduces the difficulty in compiling process plans while also enabling a smooth response to adjustments like quality issues, emergency orders, and equipment failures.

04. Production Preparation

Multiple departments plan to share guidance for production execution on the workshop floor, procurement of materials by the purchasing department, and distribution plans by the materials department to enhance material distribution and availability, and reduce downtime due to material shortages.

05. Feedback Execution

Through a system's intelligent integrated engine, achieve seamless integration of ERP/MES/APS systems, forming a closed-loop rolling planning system. The plan is executable and continuous, enhancing the overall quality of production planning.

06. Cost Reduction

Efficiently allocate company resources such as equipment, production capacity, and labor to minimize downtime losses, enhance resource utilization, ensure suitable equipment produces the right order products, and help reduce costs for the enterprise.

07. Management Enhancement

Significantly enhance plan efficiency, reduce abnormal errors, shorten order delivery times, help enterprises achieve standardized and systematic production management, making production more orderly, and boost customer satisfaction.