advanced planning and scheduling

ICRON Advanced Planning & Scheduling in Aerospace
Base Maintenance, Component Repair & Engine MRO

Introduction
The Airline and Aerospace sectors are amongst the most exacting in the world. The highest standards are demanded, together with fast turnaround times. And yet, pressures on revenues and costs are always present. For profitability and long term survival, Operational Excellence is an absolute essential. Process optimisation is a critical component in this.

Introduction to Base Maintenance Scheduling

Figure 1 - Generation and control over task cards is the key in Base Maintenance.

In Base Maintenance Scheduling the orderly removal of components, despatch for repair or replacement, is controlled via routine and ad-hoc task cards. A good understanding of work sequencing is important. Generation of task cards, especially ad-hoc task cards, using Enterprise resource Planning (ERP) technology can be slow and tedious. This compromises turnaround times and a better solution is needed.

Additionally, excellent communication on the progress and return of components is essential to determine the aircraft’s return into service. Manual planning techniques are not up to the task of determining the requirements in a complex, dynamic and constantly changing environment. A solution to this is addressed in this paper.

Component Repair Workshop Scheduling

Figure 2 - Aircraft Component Repair workshops face special challenges.

Aircraft Component Repair Workshops face specific planning challenges. Manual Task Card generation in Base Maintenance is not able to specify the required return time for each component. And this may change if newly discovered work on the aircraft means that re-installation of the component will be delayed. Frequently every job is indicated as “urgent” but the reality dictates that, with finite capacity, some form of priority must prevail. And this priority will change with time. Again, manual planning is not up to the complexity and change.

Introduction to ICRON Advanced Planning & Scheduling
ICRON Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) is a powerful, Finite Capacity planning & scheduling software system offering management decision support. ICRON helps the companies to produce realistic and functional schedules applied to control the progress on the shop floor. An ICRON APS implementation maximises resource utilisation, increases inventory turnover, improves customer service levels and improves communication and co-ordination, internally, with clients and suppliers.     ICRON can be used to address a wide range of planning and scheduling problems in different planning environments. It can be operated in automatic (typically 60-100% of operations), semi-automatic or fully manual mode, depending on the planning problem and client needs. ICRON runs complex and highly efficient Operations Research algorithms on its state-of-art, finite capacity planning and scheduling engine. Its fast graphical algorithm modelling tool enables fast and easy development of highly customised solutions to specific problems. Operation can be client/server based or, more popularly, web based.

At a high level, planning problems can be categorised into two main groups:
•    Long and mid-term strategic and tactical planning
•    Short term or real-time operations planning

ICRON APS Operation

Figure 3 - ICRON APS comprises a core engine surrounded by planning algorithms, mathematical and heuristic solvers.

ICRON APS reads latest data from any digital source, including other systems, digital devices and PC based files, such as MS-Excel and MS-Access.  It then creates a model of the production environment, including all active constraints and business rules and business logic. ICRON APS then executes complex calculations to determine the start and end times of each operation for all jobs in the shop floor. Technology constraints such as predecessor/successor relationships, resource constraints such as manpower supply, tools, work centres, space, shifts, efficiencies, capacities and material/supply constraints, such as stocks, lead times, and acquisition plans are defined and managed by an ICRON APS model. Constraints can be injected and removed as needed. Scheduling logic, specific to the company, is implemented in the model and, planning and scheduling solutions are generated by executing advanced heuristic algorithms or by solving mathematical models.
The outputs from ICRON are finished, optimised plans, presented as charts (typically used by planners), reports (typically used by management) and updated and corrected data feeds to other systems.

Core Strengths
ICRON is a global firm of industrial engineers specialising in Operations Research. This allows detailed, accurate and robust analysis of the client’s business model, business rules and preferences, which are then captured into the APS systems. Use of graphical modelling eliminates the need for separate computer programmers and ensures that the understanding captured in Operations Research is fully carried into the final systems. Experience across a wide range of industries globally around the world allows deep understanding of planning problems and identification and transfer of best practices.

ICRON Features
•    FLEXIBILITY – ICRON can be used to address virtually any planning problem in an environment, from network analysis, manpower, materials and operations planning to detailed financial planning. ICRON is designed precisely around clients’ needs and does not force changes in work practices based on system limitations and constraints.
•    SPEED – all ICRON APS operations take place in the PC RAM delivering solutions in seconds to a few minutes. This allows planners to produce multiple offline scenarios and then choose the most suitable plan to implement. It also enables fast reaction to changes in the planning environment.
•    FAST GRAPHICAL MODELLING - Once the planning requirements have been defined, it typically takes only a few days to write algorithms and operate the system. The algorithms are presented as graphical flow charts and it is easy to follow and understand the logic. This makes future system adjustment or enhancement quick, easy and cheap to achieve, delivering a long useful service life and low operating costs.
•    FINITE CAPACITY SCHEDULING – ICRON will only assign a task to an available resource, meaning that all plans delivered are realistic and achievable, giving confidence to all stakeholders.

ICRON Benefits
ICRON delivers a range of benefits, which will vary by use. However a number of consistent themes appear and are offered with any implementation:
•    VISIBILITY – ICRON is a “finite capacity” scheduling system. This means it has the capability to project schedules forward in time, based on current data and anticipated future work. Through this, planners can identify forward resource conflicts and bottlenecks, determine possible solutions or raise the issues with management. Solving such problems ahead of time avoids crises and reduces costs.
With no limit on the number of authorised users that can access an ICRON server, planning and feedback information is transferred in real-time to all stakeholders, from management to the workspace. This visibility allows individuals to see the effect of their own actions on the big picture and thus improve on their own work practices. This is one of the cornerstones of Six Sigma and LEAN operations. Linkage with clients and suppliers offers additional visibility in directions, smoothing real-time communications processes and improving external relationships.
•    SUSTAINED OPTIMISATION – Best operating practices are defined and captured in the Operations Research phase of an ICRON implementation. These are then applied across all operations and, fast re-scheduling capability ensures that any operation is held on, or very close to optimum performance at all times.
Planners workloads are reduced through auto-scheduling, typically by up to 80% compared with manual techniques. This provides additional time for effective production control and plan implementation, as well as generation of scenario analyses, offering both current and future savings. This typically translates to a 5-15% reduction in total operating costs.
•    BUSINESS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT (BPI) – Staying “ahead of the game” is key to sustained business success and, today this has never been more true than today. Fast solution times and auto-scheduling capability transform the planners’ role from data preparation to scenario analysis. By producing multiple offline schedules and selecting the most suitable planners are identifying better ways of working, better processes and thus practicing sustained BPI.

ICRON in aerospace MRO
Aircraft Heavy/Base Maintenance

Aircraft heavy maintenance presents a number of specific challenges. Time is critical, based on the high cost of aircraft on the ground and thus real-time work schedule monitoring, adjustment and re-scheduling ability are essential. Heavy or Base Maintenance planning is considered in conjunction with its associated Component Repair Workshops, both in-house and outsourced.

Operations Planning and Operations Control
Planning in aerospace operations are categorised into two separate activities, Operations Planning and Operations Control. All plans are an idealised scenario, based on the latest information available at the time of plan preparation. During the course of maintenance, many things will occur that require alteration of the plan. The control function allows adjustment of the plan and keeps (or attempts to keep) the check on schedule. There are several methods of adjusting the plan:
•    deferral of maintenance to a later check
•    addition of personnel to complete the work
•    outsourcing the work

Operations Planning
“The objective for Maintenance & Engineering is to deliver airworthy vehicles to the flight operations department in time to meet the flight schedule with all maintenance activities either completed or properly deferred.”
1.    A finite set of tasks are produced for the aircraft.
2.    The intervals at which each task can be done are determined.
3.    The manpower need for each task is determined.
4.    Each task is planned on a day by checking the finite capacity of manpower, facilities, tools and materials.

Operations Control
1.    Progress data (percentage completion data) is collected from production
2.    Any change in manpower, facility, tools, equipment etc... resources is collected
3.    Plan is adjusted. The goal is to keep or to attempt to keep the operations as scheduled.

ICRON in Component Repair Planning
The ICRON APS architecture and functionality for Workshops is similar to that for Base Maintenance. ICRON provides a centralised and automatic scheduling tool, providing visibility over operations, resources and materials. Additionally ICRON APS provides:
•    A planner’s database interface (dBInt) to maintain information regarding resources, shifts, maintenance and breakdowns, parts resource assignment etc.
•    Work Orders issued by Base Maintenance and 3rd party demand will create Job Orders in the appropriate workshops or outsource vendors, if appropriate.
•    Delivery deadlines are be generated within the Base Maintenance APS and fed to the Workshops APS. Manual adjustment is also possible.
•    Optimised and sequenced work orders are generated in the Workshops APS and fed to the relevant shop floor interfaces. These are created by ICRON, as needed.
•    The ICRON shop floor interfaces provide feedback to the ICRON APS on job status and completion.
•    Interaction between Workshops and Base Maintenance to ensure that late component returns are flagged in advance, thus avoiding conflicts between Workshops and Base Maintenance schedules.
•    Fast parts tracing capability.

ICRON Screenshots in Heavy/Base Maintenance
All screens in ICRON are fully customisable and the following are offered as typical examples. All ICRON screens are interactive, allowing easy manual intervention, if needed. Defined rules ensure that no task can be assigned manually to an inappropriate resource.

Main View
This main view screen is divided into 4 sections:
1.    Task Card Scheduling chart
2.    Task Card Details table
3.    Manpower Loading chart
4.    Manpower Loading  table

Figure 4 - ICRON Heavy Maintenance Main Screen

1.    Task Card Scheduling (Gantt chart) - typically used by planners as a pictorial view of the different tasks, assigned resources and current completion status against time (given on the x-axis). The current completion status for each resource is indicated by colour code:
•    GREEN – the task is not completed and will meet its scheduled deadline
•    RED - the task is not completed and will not meet its scheduled deadline (problem)
•    GREY - the task is completed
Planners have the opportunity to focus on problem areas indicated, drill down to find the source of the problem and agree solutions with management. Grey schedule bars indicated with the hourglass symbol indicates a delay to a task, e.g., awaiting a component.

2.    Task Card Details table – by clicking on a particular task in the Gantt Task Card Scheduling view, the task details are provided in this table.

3.    Manpower Loading Chart – this chart shows the manpower requirements and availability per day associated with the Gantt Task Card Scheduling view above. Manpower requirements by team are indicated in blue and availability in yellow. It can be seen clearly, that the manpower requirements for Team 2 exceed availability on 26/10/07 and 31/10/07. This provides early warning to the planner and the opportunity to reassign available manpower or report an unavoidable delay, if not possible. In this case, it is likely that the delayed “red” tasks in the Gantt Task Card Scheduling view above are compromised by lack of manpower.

4.    Manpower Loading Table – this table provides a summary of the total manpower requirements per team by day.

Task Card View

Figure 5 -Task Card view
This screen provides greater detail of the Task Card schedule. The deadline for completion of tasks is shown as a red vertical line, giving planners a clear view of the critical items causing delay and the opportunity to drill down and determine the root causes.

Figure 6 - "Drag and drop" functionality.
Interactive “drag and drop” functionality in ICRON allows planners to intervene manually and then re-schedule for optimisation around the changes made, to identify possible solutions to planning problems. For example, specific tasks could be started earlier when manpower availability is better to de-bottleneck a later problem.

Figure 7 - Identifying the reason for a delay.
The planner can identify the cause of a delay simply by selecting the delayed task and choosing the “cause” item from a drop-down menu.

Manpower Loading View

Figure 8 - Automatic manpower conflict resolution.
ICRON can also resolve manpower conflicts automatically by re-scheduling tasks, while taking full consideration of materials availability and due dates. ICRON highlights the changes due to the re-scheduling. If the conflict is not resolved, ICRON highlights to the user that an increase in resource is needed.

ICRON Reports

Figure 9 - ICRON provides tailored management reports over the web.
ICRON is web-based and secure access can be granted to users in any location. Reports are tailored to need and multiple layers of data filtration are possible for quick and easy access to required information.

Figure 10 - Task card data table.
In the above view, all task card data are displayed in a single report. Again, for ease of reference and identification, colour coding (red, green, and grey) is used to indicate task completion status. Fields indicated as hyperlinks can be selected to drill down to greater detail.

Figure 11 - ICRON man hour requirement report.
This report indicates the man hour requirements per day. The number of task cards assigned to each team/crew, trade type per day is displayed. Users can drill down to display the respective task cards for each day.

Figure 12 - Materials report indicating lack of spares.
This screen provides a listing of critical materials. The rows are highlighted in re indicating that a lack of materials will cause scheduling delays. Details include current inventory levels and remaining inventory based on projected usage. Users can drill down to see materials usage details.

Figure 13 - Materials usage details.
The materials usage details report links individual materials to their respective task cards and, the time that the materials will be need to meet their scheduled requirements. All ICRON web reports can be downloaded to MS-Excel for further offline analysis via a single click.

Figure 14 - Customised task completion chart.
It is simple in ICRON to create customised charts and reports. In this example the client had requested a simple graphical representation of task phase completions for a given period.

Aero Engine MRO

Planning in aero engine MRO can be categorised into two areas:
•    Engine Module Scheduling – A high-level view of engine and module movements, generally used for determination of engine MRO completion times and forward capacity projections and bottleneck identification.
•    Component Repair Scheduling – Detailed scheduling of engine components through the repair and overhaul processes.

Figure 15 - The relationship between engines, modules and parts and their respective maintenance orders.
The scheduling areas have their own focus, but are interrelated and operate in tandem, such that changes in one update the schedule in the other through synchronisation.

Figure 16 - ICRON integrates with the ERP and other systems and data sources to deliver realistic and achievable finished plans and schedules.
ICRON is “complimentary”, not “replacement” technology, integrating seamlessly with ERP/MRP II and other systems to deliver finished, realistic and achievable plans to planners, managers and the shop-floor.

Figure 17 - ICRON takes away routine manual processes.
As with Base Maintenance and Component Repair, ICRON can automatically schedule up to 80% of tasks, keeping process optimisation on track and freeing up planners’ time for more productive activities. ICRON’s finite capacity planning creates feasible schedules taking into account significant constraints, such as, technology, materials and resources (machine capacities, shifts, manpower. Proper work sequencing and smoothing ensures realistic resource loads, increasing employee satisfaction and boosting productivity.

Figure 18 - ICRON offers planners full visibility over work sequence and progress.

Through increased repair shop visibility ICRON introduces important data flows into the planning system, including shop-floor feedback. ICRON reads real-time repair shop-floor data to monitor and report progress on operations. These data are fed into reports and used in re-scheduling so that planners and management can view real-time progress. This data link does not exist in ERP/MRP II based systems, making the shop floor a virtual “black box”. ICRON’s improved visibility brings a number of significant benefits:
•    It ensures that  parts can be tracked by linking progress data to the current work centre
•    Planners can view work progress and the operations sequence from their desktops
•    Estimates for work completion and delivery dates are accurate. The risk of delay through resource conflicts and bottlenecks can be identified in advance and early action can be taken, or early warning provided, if the delay is unavoidable.

Figure 19 - A common real-time planning medium avoids planning conflicts.
With manual planning, work is usually assigned across multiple work centres to a number of individual planners. Errors in communication or misunderstandings are a frequent source of planning conflicts that have to be resolved, affecting work performance and the work environment. ICRON avoids such conflicts by providing a common planning and communication medium.

Figure 20 - Powerful heuristic based solutions ensure that any challenge can be addressed.
ICRON uses computer power and custom made heuristics to generate schedules which maximise the utilisation of key resources, especially in bottlenecked areas. The results are:
•    The overall capacity of repair shop is increased (typically between 5-15%) by smoothing workflow and decreasing sequence dependent setup times.
•    As a result, the total number of engines maintained increases without the need for capital investment.
•    This leads to increased productivity, improved revenues, improved on-time delivery and better customer relationships.

ICRON Screenshots in Engine Module MRO Scheduling

Figure 21 - ICRON enables a long term view of resource utilisation and commitment to future orders.
ICRON can be used to look at short, medium and long term planning issues and resource utilisation. Scenario analyses and inclusion of dummy orders can be used to project forward capacity and identify future conflicts and bottlenecks.

Figure 22 - Engine module kitting dates can easily be adjusted manually with ICRON's Database Interface.
Kitting dates for each engine are auto-calculated by ICRON, considering work scope, resource availability and turnaround time target. The dates will drive the sequencing and priority of each job.
However, when there is a need to change the kit date due to unforeseen circumstances, e.g. change of engine priority, hold part due to material unavailability; planners can manually enter a new kitting date for a specific engine using ICRON’s convenient Database Interface.

Figure 23 - Work Centre Report
ICRON’s work centre report displays all work centres and the operations that are assigned to each.

Figure 24 - Work Centre Schedule.
Each work centre has its own schedule generated by ICRON, which displays, with priority all the jobs the work centre needs to perform over a period of time. It shows the job sequence and respective start time and planned completion. It gives clear visibility to users which jobs are running late so special attention can be given to expedited operations. Bold red highlights rushed operations, soft red indicates operations that will not meet their deadlines without intervention and, green that all is on time. Grey highlighting (not shown) indicates that an operation is closed.

Figure 25 - Work Centre Schedule detail.
•    Latest Start Time – indicates the latest start date for the operation to start in order to be on time for the module build.
•    LOC – indicates that a part is at the work centre (IN)
•    Dwell Time – indicates how long a part has been in a work centre

Figure 26 - Capacity Planning in ICRON.
Work centre loading charts are used for planning capacity requirements. These guide management on such items as:
•    Outsourcing
•    Overtime
•    Leave granting
•     Work force requirements
•    Investment in new machinery and equipment
They provide management with the ability to commit to forward orders (preliminary orders) and associated deadlines and, in the early identification of forward conflicts and bottlenecks.

Figure 27 - ICRON report showing resource usage by week.
Resource usage by week reports is used for aggregate planning needs.

Figure 28 - Preliminary order entry.
Preliminary order entry gives sales management the ability to commit to forward orders (preliminary orders) and associated deadlines. ICRON calculates a “return date” considering the plant’s current capacity and work load and, highlights what jobs are pushed out if a new order is accepted and prioritised.

Figure 29 - Module transfer to another engine.
ICRON includes dedicated "module transfer to another engine" functionality, not available in ERP/MRP II systems. All details are written back to the appropriate engine.

ICRON Screenshots in Engine Component Repair Scheduling


Figure 30 - ICRON Setup Screen for Component Repair.

Figure 31 - Chart showing Sales Order by Engine.
This chart shows sales order number by engine serial number. Rows are sorted by sales order then by engine number and row headers are colour coded by engine number. Grey bars in the Gantt chart are closed jobs, green are sales orders that can meet delivery date and, red indicates a sales order cannot meet its delivery date.

Figure 32 - Chart showing Sales Order by Job.
The same information can be displayed by job number, showing engine serial number and short module number. Rows are sorted by module number and, row header colour coded by module number.

Figure 33 - Chart showing Sales Order by work centre.
Also by work centre.

Figure 34 – Operations at a work centre sorted by operations sequence.
Here, operations at a work centre are sorted by operations sequence. Blue colour coding of the Gantt bars indicates work in progress, while yellow indicates outstanding operations.

Figure 35 - Chart listing all operations at all work centres.
For a high-level view all operations at all work centres can be viewed on a single screen.

Figure 36 - Changing an operations sequence.
Changing operations sequence manually, e.g., in the case of changed priorities, is made simple by inclusion of dedicated functionality.


Figure 37 - Placing a job on hold.
Placing a job on hold, e.g., awaiting another part or component involves a few simple steps. Other jobs can then be re-prioritised by re-scheduling.

Figure 38 - Placing a job on rush.
Once the reason to hold a job has passed, the job can be rushed to the head of the queue and all other jobs re-prioritised.



Figure 39 - Sales Order Report.
The ICRON sales order report lists sales orders by number and includes, engine and induction date details, as well as planned start and completion dates. Details for each sales order can be obtained by drill-down.

Figure 40 - Job List Report.
This report gives a full listing of all current jobs. Green rows are in progress or outstanding and grey, jobs that are closed.

Figure 41 - Work Centre Report.
The work centre report provides a listing of all current jobs assigned to an individual work centre.

Figure 42 - Operations at a Work Centre Report.
This report provides another view of all current operations assigned to an individual work centre. Green rows are on schedule and red are will be late without intervention. Users can drill down on red items to determine the cause of the delay and agree a solution in advance.

Industry

Also in this branche, we notice a strong pressure from the market and new governmental regulations. In The Netherlands an example of this is the WMO law (Wet Maatschappelijke Ondersteuning) with the objective to have people stay at home as long as possible. This is the reason that many local governmental organizations outsource the homecare. Because of this homecare has become very dynamic and under constant pressure. The objective is to work efficient,  while obtaining high-quality Client service and medical treatments.

Issues

Because of more strict compliancy to rules as defined in laws like AWBZ, home care organizations find it difficult to employ nurses with the right level where necessary. This means that sometimes client service is done by nurses not educated (enough) to perform the required tasks.

This causes pressure on the quality of the jobs and increases the risks for failures. It might be a reason that some organizations have the perception that the Incident reporting increases (MIT report; “Meldingen Incidenten Thuiszorg”).

Another trend is that nurses perceive the pressure on the job-content as demotivating where they believe that the total treatment package is improving both the patient’s wellbeing as well as their job-satisfaction.

Solution

ICRON works together with specialists in the field of healthcare/homecare, such as Dehora in Amsterdam and Brussels.

ICRON’s Advanced Planning and Scheduling solution offers expertise in this field of organization and Client logistics and promises increase of productivity and higher utilization percentages of existing capacities. Better for Client (Client satisfaction),  better for care staff (greater employee satisfaction), and better for the organization (Optimal use of materials, reduces labor costs, reliable management information).

Industry

Increased demand for raw materials prompted the need to access mines which are located in rugged in land regions accessible only by shallow river networks. It is not feasible to land transport large quantities of cargo from these inland mines to distant sea ports and it is not possible for bulk carriers to approach the inland ports. Barge transshipment systems provide a very cost effective solution to this problem; cargo is land transported to a nearby shallow river/sea port and barges are deployed to carry the cargo from the shallow water port to large ports or offshore floating transshipment facilities.

A barge transshipment system is the most important and sophisticated component of its supply chain network. It is usually the bottle neck and it must be carefully analyzed, designed and implemented. This requires sophisticated trade-offs analysis, extensive simulations with all possible scenarios (different weather conditions, barge sizes, port logistics equipments, etc.).

Issues

Thanks to increased competition, industrial logistics providers need to design innovative and sophisticated barge transshipment systems. They need to ensure maximum throughput while keeping fixed and operational costs minimum. They are also forced to shoulder stiff penalties if minimum performance levels are not provided.

Most industrial logistics companies does barge cycle analysis work manually or uses in house/third party simulation tools. With manual analysis, to cope with complexities, planners need to oversimplify the analysis model. On the other hand, classical simulation tools are too rigid, and they are not “intelligent” enough. It takes a lot of time to implement the model in such tools and these models usually accept input and calculate the results, they do not “cleverly” offer solutions or continuously optimizes the system performance with changing scenarios.

The planning effort does not end at the analysis. Once the company is rewarded with contract to build the proposed system, this system needs a detailed design and implementation. Its operations need to be planned and scheduled carefully to ensure optimum barge cycle. Unfortunately, this day to day scheduling is also done manually (or not done at all) which results in higher operational costs and inferior throughput compared to system optimum potential.

Solution

ICRON Technologies develops tools and mathematical models that support the optimization of the supply chain network in every level: from supply chain network analysis and design to advanced planning and scheduling of daily operations.

ICRON Technologies can help industrial logistic companies in analysis phase of barge transshipment system to:

ICRON can also help industrial logistic companies to in planning and scheduling of an existing barge transshipment system to:

Industry

The tire business is competitive, complex and demanding. A good portfolio of high-performance products and service excellence are key to business success. To sustain customer loyalty, the promise of product performance must be matched by excellence in the Supply Chain. And it is here that the greatest financial efficiencies are to be found. In fact, every dollar saved in the Supply Chain is worth up to 10 dollars in sales revenue at the bottom line.

Issues

Developing finished plans and schedules in complex environments requires processing of large data volumes and solution of multiple planning problems that have to be integrated to give the final answers. This can lead to very long processing times. Most Supply Chain planning is done using a variant of MRP functionality in the ERP platform. The problem is that such systems are blind to rapid changes in demand, customer priorities, maintenance, breakdowns, shifts, materials supply dynamics, etc. Planners have to compensate by holding more materials and finished products inventory than needed to be safe and, this costs money. Real-time planning generally has to be done outside the system and this is very slow, inaccurate and inefficient.

Solution

ICRON Advanced Planning & Scheduling for Tire Manufacture and Operations. Powerful and flexible Management Information Systems (MIS) technology for use in Tire Manufacturing, and Operations environments. Offers low entry cost, fast ROI and long system life. Suitable for Network Planning, Aggregate Master Planning and Real-time Scheduling. ICRON offers flexible finite, object orientated, Advanced Planning and Scheduling MIS technology for tire manufacturers and component suppliers that plugs into existing systems to provide optimized performance in strategic planning and real-time operations throughout the Supply Chain, including full raw materials control, all manufacturing operations, finished products warehousing, logistics, distribution, etc.

Industry

Issues

Best suppliers are also focused on supplier integration, on what and how data are shared, up and down the supply chain. While an OEM will fully disclose order information and inventory requirements to a Tier 1, as soon as the OEM knows those requirements, the Tier 1 will then fully disclose that information to its Tier 2 suppliers. Companies understand the benefits of tight collaboration with their suppliers and customers, but are struggling to execute collaboration plans. Supply chains are becoming more global in nature, and they require more configuration planning to optimize the supply network. Today more and more organizations are implementing APS systems to optimize their supply chains to achieve cost reductions and improved customer responsiveness.

Solution

ICRON helps automotive  companies to answer these market challenges in ways that provide long-term advantage. ICRON provides a very flexible business modeling, planning and scheduling environment, which directly addresses the unique requirements of the companies in automotive industry:

 ICRON’s solutions have been experienced by the leading automotive companies for many years. Our solutions help these companies meet the unique challenges of the automotive industry.

Based on a unique enterprise model, and combined with the technological enablers of ICRON, ICRON solution is the only enterprise planning system, which supports:

• Distributed plan synchronization between business units within an enterprise, or between suppliers and manufacturers;
• Definition of planning logic based on customer requirements using algorithmic templates of ICRON GSAMS;
• Online responsive scheduling of shop-floor activities

ICRON provides the following benefits and features in Supply Chain Planning:

• Decrease in costs (inventory holding costs, transportation costs, production costs, penalty costs, etc …) and increase in revenue, thus profit maximization
• Better utilization of invested capital.
• Extensive scenario analysis and comparison capabilities which allows financial, investment, campaign and crisis analysis.
• Optimized use of production and transportation resources based on user defined objectives (i.e. minimization of capacity loss due to product shift, minimization of environmental impact, etc …)

Benefits and features of ICRON are:

• ICRON seamlessly integrates with your existing data sources including your existing ERP system, in house databases or spreadsheets.
• ICRON provides custom made optimization models which are tailored specifically for your supply chain network.
• ICRON significantly improves planning and execution productivity while decreasing planning time.
• ICRON decreases supply chain optimization cycle times.
• ICRON integrates and centralizes the planning along the entire supply chain network.
• ICRON provides extensive tools to conduct what-if analysis and scenario comparison.

Planning and scheduling has never been easy, but today it is far more challenging than it was a decade ago. Planners are feeling more and more pressure to generate accurate and timely plans by considering complex production and supply chain environment, ever changing demand, heavy constraints, conflicting business objectives and processes. And to make things worse, traditional tools at hand are becoming obsolete: spreadsheet based manual planning and scheduling cannot cope with the complexity, your ERP system hardly helps and there is no off the shelf product which can address your unique production environment and supply chain network. What you need is a flexible and reliable Advanced Planning and Scheduling solutions which is tailored for your unique requirements.

With 15+ years of experience in Supply Chain Optimization, ICRON Technologies provides ICRON Advanced Planning and Scheduling (ICRON APS) solution to revolutionize your planning and scheduling activities by its mature, cutting-edge technology, and innovative modeling and implementation practices. ICRON APS provides optimized, automatically generated plans and schedules while simultaneously considering demand, resource and material constraints and business objectives.

Benefits and features of ICRON APS are:

• ICRON APS provides significant cost and waste reduction by optimization based on user defined objectives (reduced cost of early/late job completion, inventory, overtime, transportation, reduced WIP times, etc.).
• ICRON APS greatly improves available-to-promise and capable-to-promise capabilities by generating realistic completion times for individual operations and jobs on entire supply chain network. This quickly translates into increased customer satisfaction.
• ICRON APS provides feasible, finite capacity schedules which can be readily published to the shop floor.
• ICRON APS significantly reduces the planning time. ICRON automatically performs most of the schedule generation activities and produces schedules in minutes rather than hours or days.
• ICRON APS provides tremendous what-if analysis capability. With its speed, accuracy easily generates as many scenarios as user requires and provides user friendly, efficiently tools for planner and management to selects the best scenario to be used as the official plan.
• ICRON APS maximizes the resource utilization by reducing the setup times by better sequencing, especially when sequence dependent setups exist.
• ICRON APS provides you fast rescheduling capability to respond to frequent changes. With ICRON, the production planning shifts from reactive, fire fighting planning to proactive, strategic planning.
• ICRON APS integrates and centralizes the planning and scheduling along the entire supply chain network.