Maintaining a competitive advantage is an essential part of a shop manager’s job, and production planning software can be a great way to reduce costs and increase efficiency with a relatively low level of initial investment. Here are five concrete ways utilizing production planning software can potentially streamline company operations.
One of the biggest advantages to using production planning software is the ability to integrate production schedules for the entire company. Every department’s schedule is coordinated with one another’s in order to meet your common goals. Every aspect of a product’s creation and distribution is cross-referenced in an instant, saving hundreds of man-hours on adjusted schedules alone.
Unforeseen events can spell disaster to any manufacturer. Production planning software can adapt to these occurrences swiftly and efficiently. Manufacturing can be moved to other facilities, or product can be rerouted to reach customers where demand is the strongest. The software can suggest multiple options, or decide what the most cost-effective solution will be.
The cost of raw material is a significant one for most manufacturers, but many companies assume that they have very little influence over the price at which they purchase them. Production planning software is able to track the prices for materials and parts from hundreds of vendors. Make purchases when prices are low and offload excess material when prices are high.
Every aspect of the production process is recorded by production planning software. It is possible to generate thousands of reports on everything from the cost of raw materials at a single facility to the company-wide cost of shipping a specified product during the past year. With this much data, it is easy to determine a facility’s limiting factor, gain insights into personnel efficiency, and ultimately make improvements to the production process.
Expanding a manufacturing facility or opening a new location used to be a process that could involve hundreds of personnel and the investment of millions of dollars. With production planning software, however, it is possible to run simulations of hundreds of growth scenarios without taking unnecessary risks. These simulations provide hard data for investors and higher management for compelling and persuasive presentations.
In this post, you’ve seen how production planning software can make your facility stronger—by improving on-time delivery, cutting firefighting, and helping you use capacity more intelligently. But what does that transformation actually look like inside a real manufacturing business?
In our short eBook, “Producing for Profit,” you’ll follow a growing manufacturer that’s struggling with late orders, rising inventory and overtime, and constant friction between sales and production—until they adopt a connected planning and scheduling system.
You’ll see how they: