White Box APS

APS systems have been contributing to reducing inventories and improving on-time delivery for years. Nevertheless they are usually still not able to combine practical optimisation algorithms with the planner's experience. The white box APS approach shows how the advantages of optimisation can be used without adversely affecting the necessary transparency and intervention options by the planner.

The limits of optimisation

The extreme case for using optimisation comes when the person undertaking the optimisation controls the production and therefore replaces the planner. But in practice this only occurs in exceptional circumstances. As helpful and cost-saving as optimisation may be, attempts to pass over the planner are problematic. In may cases these approaches fail as a result of poor results. In other cases - if the potential for improvement compared with the previous planning is large enough - the result falls far short of what is possible.

The white box APS approach

The purpose of the white box APS approach is to exploit the advantages of optimisation and to connect these with the situational experience and knowledge of the planner. This becomes possible by not seeing the results of the optimisation as a stipulation for production but rather as a suggestion that the planner analyses and corrects if necessary. Ideally the result of the optimisation is saved as a scenario that is only effective operationally after approval. In order to still be able to use the optimisation comprehensively without restricting the necessary transparency and intervention options, wayRTS offers you:

Excellent visualisation and analysis functions with hierarchical information preparation up to recording the planning situation at a glance.
Simple and convenient tools for interactive planning (including direct calculation of the effects)
Optimisation algorithms that include the organisation's flexibility
Provision of a consistent plan as the initial situation for the optimisation
Adequately powerful data model to depict all of the value-added processes and all the necessary production and industry peculiarities.
Scenario technology to undertake intervention without risk and if liked to transfer the changes in the scenario to the operational planning.

The white box APS approach avoids such frequent errors in typical optimisation results as unnecessary delays to customers, high work in progress and inconsistent planning results. The better results have four main reasons:

Handling inadequate master data quality
In very rare cases is the master data from an ERP system entered in the quality required by the APS system. Inappropriate settings for the throughput time, planned delivery time and available capacity, the effects of which go under in the ERP system, have important effects in an APS system. In contrast, the white box APS visualises the master data faults before and after the optimisation and ensures that outliers are analysed and their causes resolved.
Initial basis for the optimisation
The optimisation is frequently based on a planning situation with barriers to the material flow and shortages. In contrast to this, the white box APS is based on a consistent planning situation and thus avoids conditions which in fact are not constraints and this therefore provides better results that can also be tracked better.
Including the flexibility of the organisation
Most optimisers permit the (workplace-related) choice between overload (fully flexible organisation) and no overload (completely rigid organisation). The truth however is frequently in the middle - the white box APS can accept the overload up to a certain level depending on the urgency (i.e. if the customer deadline is exceeded).
Balancing out inadequate information content
An optimiser only optimises the requirements of which he is aware. As however he only has available a simplified depiction of reality, no other solution methods are considered, e.g.:
- Accelerating procurement after discussion with the supplier or changing the supplier
- Accelerating production in agreement with the supervisor or production manager.
- Substituting components or elements
- Moving uncritical deadlines
- Procuring components or elements via courtesy relationships or hidden inventories (e.g parts that require reworking)

Therefore the optimisation result is behind that of the planner. Attempts to show the complexity of reality in the system have proven to be a waste of time. Frequently even a moderate expansion of the detail level has resulted in APS systems no longer being operable due to their complexity. For this reason the white box APS enables the planner to analyse and override the optimisation result at any time.