Often one of the key goals a client has in implementing an Advanced Planning and Scheduling tool is to automate the scheduling process as much as possible. Many planners use complicated Excel spreadsheets to schedule their machines and labor while keeping track of multiple constraints in their head. PlanetTogether contains many features that help model these constraints automatically, so the planner has to do very little, if any, manual scheduling. Here I’ve outlined just one of the many constraints that are especially useful to process manufacturers. More to come!

 Maximum and Minimum Capacity on Batch Resources

A process manufacturing plant will commonly contain a large number of batch resources, such as tanks, that can hold varying levels of product. For example, one tank may hold up to 5,000 pounds while another tops out at 2,500.  Each Resource in PlanetTogether has a field called MaxQty that can be populated to reflect these constraints. When this value is set on a resource, it prevents any batch that is over that amount from scheduling there.

There is also a field called MinQty. Perhaps your plant has a large tank that holds 5,000 pounds, but for efficiency’s sake you never fill it with batches less than 4,000. MinQty can be populated on this Resource to reflect such a constraint. These properties can be set in the Resource Configurator:

 Next time the planner imports a new job and optimizes, PlanetTogether will automatically respect those constraints. No more headaches trying to remember which tanks can hold what and how much!

This is just one of the many options an APS system like PlanetTogether offers to help minimize time spent manually scheduling resources. What are some other process manufaturing constraints your clients could benefit from automating?