operations planning software

As human resources are the companies most valuable and expensive asset, companies are looking for new Workforce Management (WFM) Solutions allowing for complete and flexible management of these resources.

Especially the following factors are changing requirements in the workforce management area;

• Assure that the relevant resources are available at the moment they are required
• Cope with sudden changes in demand and original planning
• Making optimal use of both human resources , (scare, expensive) equipment and materials
• Increasing employee individualism and focus on work-life balance
• Compliancy with Labour and Union Laws

ICRON’s WFM Solutions are based on the experience and proven technologies gained by Icron Technologies during the past 20 years in the areas of planning, optimization and execution.  ICRON’s unparalleled, distributed and component based planning and optimization technology allows for human resource optimization and control meeting exactly your organizations requirements.

Using the unique, but extensively proven, ICRON GSAMS modules, a solution is composed, covering all aspects of your organization’s specific needs concerning -legal, -union, -customer, -company, -departmental, -employee and material oriented obligations and requirements.

Business Environments

ICRON WFM Solution is applicable in a multitude of organizations where people and many other resources (equipment, materials, space, rooms, travel etc. etc.) need to be controlled including:

• Healthcare, Homecare (Thuiszorg)
• Industrial Services (Maintenance, Repair, Field Service)
• Professional Services (Security, Temp. Agencies, Cleaning, Consultancy, etc.)
• Aviation
• Air Traffic Control
• Car Body Repair
• Etc.

Components

FORECASTING allows for, based on your organizations business orientation -commercial obligations, targets and / or expectations- , long term capacity requirements determination and optimization. You will be advised concerning requirements and availability of all key resources - being employees, equipment, materials etc – you defined, taking into account on one side the products or services your organization sells, or expects to sell, and on the other side the constraints applicable (legal, union and company directives etc.).

DEMAND PLANNING allows for medium and short term resource requirements calculation and optimization based on your ongoing commercial business obligations. Optimal shift and/or task arrangements are calculated taking into account again the applicable constraints, like your organization’s business hours and shift and/or task lengths etc. Eventual required equipment  or material is reported and shortages are reported.

ROSTERING/PLANNING allows for the medium to short term optimal allocation of employees to specific shifts or tasks, taking into account again the legal and union directives, but also - certifications and/or skills, - both the employee and/or customer obligations and preferences (positive or negative), -travel distances etc. Violating any preference or legal labour rules is on-line recognized and visualized.

MAINTENANCE/DISPATCHING allows for maintenance of the released planned rosters or Schedules.  The schedules are updated at any time changes are occurring.  This can be employee unavailability’s due to holiday or illness etc., changed working times, or job or task unavailability’s or re-arrangements due to changes in obligations. Again any change is verified against the given constraints.  Total working time, overtime (plus/min hours), shifts performed etc. is counted to enable fair and balanced allocation and the time and attendance reporting to any financial system

WEB COMMUNICATION allows for on-line intra- and/or internet presentation and reporting of shifts and tasks.  On-line real-time progress reporting will allow management to follow up on ongoing activities and react on any unexpected disturbances in employee activities to be performed.

Functionality

The full ‘Plan-Do-Check-Act’ cycle is supported by ICRON HLS.  It is applicable for straightforward single site organizations up to complex, matrix oriented, multi site organisations.

Long Term Planning

• Optimize capacity available versus demand requirements and vice versa.
• Seasonal & Cyclic (including holiday periods) capacity requirements
• Optimal shift generation based on company policies and requirements
• Parameterized Scenario optimization

Planning/Rostering

• Employee availabilities/un-availabilities
• Vacation planning
• Employee characteristics & preferences
• Employee skills, certifications & allowances
• Customer characteristics & preferences
• Employee-Customer characteristics & preferences
• Travel time minimization
• Governmental, Union & Company labour rules verification
• Equipment, material & Kit planning
• Generate optimal rosters/schedules
• Generate optimal task assignments
• Shift balancing
• Self rostering (Shift bidding)
• Roster Release procedure and export  (Outlook)

Roster Maintenance/Dispatching

• Employee unavailability registration
• Task/Shift unavailability registration
• Assign open shifts/tasks based on best fit employee
• Assign ‘free’ employees based on best fit task
• Employee borrowing
• Flex pool /Flex workers assignment
• Shift/Task trading according company rules
• Shift/Task characteristics/length maintenance
• Detailed change history logging
• On-line Legal, Union & Company labour rule verification and visualization
• Working time/absenteeism reporting
• Task / Shift completion
• Overtime calculation (Union/Company) dependant
• Cost calculation
• Export to HRM system

Reporting

• Roster printing
• Management reporting
• KPI dashboards
• All reporting available via user and content secured web publishing.

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 Inventory Planning solution are:

• Freeing up working capital by inventory optimization
• Optimized distribution of products among alternative inventory locations
• Lowering inventory levels while keeping high customer service levels
• Easy integration with existing ERP systems and databases which automates data extraction and information preparation
• Fast and robust what-if analysis capabilities with multi scenario comparison
• Decreased inventory planning cycles

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.

Benefits and features of ICRON DP are:

• ICRON DP seamlessly integrates with your existing data sources including your existing ERP system, in house databases or spreadsheets.
• ICRON DP provides accuracy demand forecast and reduces the cost and risk of inaccurate demand forecast.
• ICRON DP implements advanced calculation and simulation logic to give you competitive advantage in demand planning. Tailored to your specific requirements, these algorithms greatly automate demand planning processes.
• ICRON DP significantly improves planning and execution productivity while decreasing planning time.
• ICRON DP decreases forecast cycle times.
• ICRON DP delivers accurate business reporting.
• ICRON DP provides extensive tools to conduct what-if analysis and scenario comparison.
• ICRON DP integrates and centralizes the planning along the entire supply chain network.

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.