Making true time-based manufacturing a reality

It’s more important in today’s competitive market than ever before to reduce the time between the booking of a customer order and its shipment to your customer’s location. TCM’s Master Scheduling develops an overall production plan for your operation to accomplish just that. This plan is stated in weekly quantities over a user-defined Master Scheduling time horizon.

TCM Master Scheduling allows planning by forecast, booked orders, or both. That’s important because if you plan by booked orders only, you can have problems when the order horizon is too short in relation to the manufacturing lead-time. You can also have problems when planning only by forecast…..Why? Because the demand is only as good as the forecast.

In addition, planning by forecast is insensitive to real–world demand spikes that can adversely impact your production plans.

With TCM’s Master Scheduling you get the best of both techniques, because the forecast is consumed by actual customer orders. Master Scheduling allows the use of both forecast and booked orders and provides the ability to address the near– and long–term issues of demand.

With Just–In–Time (JIT) customers, Master Scheduling smooths the impact of peaking, fast–changing demand patterns by using both reach-back and look-forward smoothing techniques.

Using the Master Scheduling module is convenient too. You can display a wide range of windows to quickly determine whether the master schedule for a particular item is achievable. Each of these views is available on a time-phased basis to help you pinpoint and adjust to any problem areas you discover.

Master Scheduling increases your material requirement predictability by establishing a consistent production schedule that considers both forecast and customer orders. Best of all, your customer service is improved through available–to–promise features that allow you to check item availability and to quote an achievable promise date.

MPS Worksheet

Here is an example of the MPS worksheet. Data can be selected in a variety of ways, and there is complete drill down capability to all sources of demand and supply.

Here is the MS selection screen. Notice the wide range of selection criteria including scheduler, product, product group, date range, and exception category. We selected all exceptions for scheduler HM.

Here is the Worksheet for Item HM-100.

Notice that you can drill down by ATP, Forecast, Rough Cut Capacity, as well as one click to enter an Firm Planned or Forecast Order.

Summary information is displayed at the top, and details for time-phased schedule of demand and supply are displayed below.