Part Definitions from Factory Physics

December 22, 2011

Background I was recently doing some reading for a book on software approaches to improving BOM management and I came across the book Factory Physics. The book has some excellent and very clear definitions of different part types which I wanted to quote here: Part: A part is a piece of raw material, a component, [...]

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The Problem with Excessive Costing Bills of Material

November 10, 2011

Background In the upcoming book “Supply Planning with MRP, DRP and APS Software,” I emphasize the importance of keeping the BOM complexity at a manageable level. There are two major issues that undermines companies ability to manage the BOM are listed below: Attempting to manage the BOM without an actual BOM solution. This is mostly commonly [...]

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How the Scheduling Problem Complexity Leads to the Best Solution

November 4, 2011

Background The current and common thinking on production scheduling is that sophisticated software is required for it. There are a lot of examples where this is true. From what I have seen, there seems to be a “sweet spot” where advanced production scheduling software seems to apply. This is where the scheduling problem is somewhat [...]

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When is Optimization Good for Production Planning?

October 19, 2011

Background Companies are always interested in knowing when are appropriate situations to use one planning method or another. I thought the book Real Optimization with SAP APO did a nice job of explaining when optimization would be a good fit for production planning as can be seen from the quote below: Optimization works best with [...]

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Approximation Methods Versus Optimization

October 18, 2011

Background I work in an environment where software is often selected based upon brand. Not nearly enough effort is spent in picking the right software based upon what that software is designed to do. Companies that fall into this trap often have to perform considerable customization of the inappropriate application in order to get it [...]

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What If You Paid Nothing for SAP Software: How SAP’s TCO Compares for Production Planning

August 9, 2011

Background and Motivation for the Research When I am often told about the reasons for decisions to go with software that I am familiar with, the logic often does not seem to make sense. In fact the entire process for repeatedly selecting expensive and lower functionality software from the major monopoly vendors turns out not [...]

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Why Mixing Operations Can be Appropriate for Weak Production Scheduling Applications

March 29, 2011

Paint manufacturing and other mixing operations like them do not have the same needs in production scheduling even through they are classified as process industry manufacturing. Background I often am placed onto projects where I help troubleshoot the production scheduling systems from large vendors. The long story short on this is that the large vendors [...]

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Recipe Management and Production Versions in Process Manufacturing

March 9, 2011

Background This article deals with a complex area of process industry manufacturing, recipe management. Recipes are unique to process manufacturing, and because discrete manufacturing tends to be a greater focus in literature and discussion than process manufacturing, recipes are in general much less well understood than similar master data objects in discrete manufacturing. Their management [...]

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How Process Manufacturing Differs from Discrete Manufacturing and How This Relates to Software Selection

March 9, 2011

Background In order to understand how to discern between software that is designed for process industry manufacturing, its important to understand how process manufacturing differs from discrete. While the terms process and discrete manufacturing have been stable and well defined for quite some time, there can sometimes be debate as to what is discreet manufacturing [...]

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Cost vs. Duration Based Optimization for Scheduling

January 20, 2011

Background Cost based optimization, or cost minimization has been the most common way to perform production planning and scheduling optimization. However, it is clear that duration or time optimization offers some very significant advantages over cost optimization. Its easer to agree on times than costs The actual objective of companies is normally to minimize times [...]

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