The 'Amazon Effect' is a term often used to describe the success and influence that the retail company has had on the changing customer expectations and retail practices. Customers are now expecting fast and accurate delivery dates that have been offered by Amazon.

Not only do customers get an accurate delivery date, they also get notified about the status of their order in real-time, from when their order is created to when it is packaged, in transit, and delivered. Amazon has created the customer's expectations of knowing when their package will arrive, to be notified immediately if it's expected to be late, and to receive it by the re-promise date. This company is setting the pace and expectation for your manufacturing company and they are constantly improving and changing their processes.

It is important to identify the current flaws in your manufacturing planning processes so that you can keep up with those changing customer demands.

Why are you struggling to meet those expectations?

Mistakes made in the planning process will result in late orders, internal chaos, unhappy customers, and lost business. 

Planners can receive thousands of sales orders each day. They then need to take all of this information to create an optimized execution plan that includes a production plan, materials plan, finished goods plan, and purchase plan. 

Common Flaws in Manufacturing Planning

Without making some changes to your planning process, it will be almost impossible to meet these customer demands and expectations. In order to meet those expectations, manufacturers must overcome two major problems:

1. Creating Accurate Production Plans: Manufacturers must create accurate production plans so they they can give accurate promise dates to the customers.
2. React Quickly to Changes: They must also be able to react quickly when something changes so that they can immediately advise customers on the changes and how it impacts them. 

Too often, manufacturing companies have production plans that get disconnected from the supply and capacity scheduling of the work centers. 

• Tasks are often grouped together at the work center level rather than at the resource level. This can cause problems when not all machines can do the same work or have the same production rate.
• Planning processes also use a technique called 'Bucketing' where tasks are put in the same time period 'bucket. The problem here is that planners don't know at what time the tasks are going to be completed within that time bucket, so it is not useful to calculate resource capacity. 

These problems severely limit your ability to give customers accurate promise dates and to understand the impact of change on promise dates. 

PlanetTogether's Advanced Planning and Scheduling System

An Advanced Planning and Scheduling System quickly and automatically creates a concurrent production plan and schedule that takes into consideration all of the constraints, sequencing preferences, and management priorities you have. 

PlanetTogether's Advanced Planning and Scheduling System allows you to extend the visibility between your scheduling, production, and procurement departments to keep demand and supply aligned to improve customer service and capitalize on the Amazon Effect. It will allow you to bring down your material costs while minimizing schedule disruptions. 

"Factory Digital Twin"

PlanetTogether can create a detailed constraint-based model of your factory, or a "Factory Digital Twin". This is an in-memory simulation of your factory that enables your software to predict future production times as it knows your resources, production rates, expected yields, and predicted product mix that will cause changeovers and queuing time.

Agile Re-Scheduling

In the occurrence of a disruption within the production facility, PlanetTogether will automatically re-schedule tasks for you in seconds. Without a powerful APS system, this would take long hours and even days spent scrambling to create a schedule that does not cause too many delays. 

Plan in Advance

PlanetTogether can support high levels of data, which means that you have increased visibility over an extended scheduling horizon. Being able to create a schedule weeks, and even months, in advance will allow you to better plan you material purchasing, capacity loads, and staffing. 

Increased Communication and Visibility

You have the ability to share your production schedule throughout the organization. The shop floor operators can see the latest version of the schedule via live access to reports. Your planners, sales, and customer service teams have visibility in any changes occurring on the shop floor and can see ship dates and capacity loads in your ERP system. That means that everyone, including your customers, is informed and can plan based on the most up-to-date and accurate information possible. 

Concurrent Planning & Scheduling allows you to:

1. Commit quickly
2. Promise delivery dates realistically
3. React to disruptions efficiently
4. Deliver on-time reliably

With PlanetTogether's Advanced Planning and Scheduling software, you will be able to outpace your competitors and capitalize on the customer expectations being created by the Amazon Effect. 

Watch our webinar on Capitalizing on the Amazon Effect with Concurrent Planning & Scheduling

Click above and navigate to "PlanetTogether: Enhancing Demand Planning in Manufacturing" to watch the webinar.