APS is a “data-intensive” tool requiring the right information to be accurate. Fortunately, most companies already have 99% of the data needed to get started and you can improve it over time. One benefit of an APS system is that it provides an incentive to clean-up and standardize data that was previously under-utilized and somewhat neglected.

You’ll need routings and bills-of-material for discrete manufacturers or formulas and run-rates for process-manufacturers. For inventory-constrained scheduling, it’s also important to have a reliable inventory control process with accurate on-hand quantities. Also, if you follow a daily planning cycle, you’ll need to track production completions daily, as well; if weekly, then production updates can be tracked weekly.

The bigger the problems to solve, the bigger the APS benefits. If you miss delivery dates frequently, stumble over quoting accuracy, miss competitive lead times, run high inventory levels, spend too much time managing schedules, or experience frequent changeovers on key equipment, then APS is a high-value solution.

What’s more, high numbers of SKUs or custom orders, multiple resources, expensive production equipment, frequent changes in customer orders and engineering change orders, long setup times, job batching requirements, and complex manufacturing flows that defy manual scheduling call for APS. Worse yet, if you face product quality-related problems from schedule mistakes, the right APS is triage and long-term care.

ERP systems are ideal in managing transactions, like order entry or inventory control. ERP evolved from accounting systems to keep track of what has happened versus planning for what is going to happen. As a result, the architecture is optimized for transaction processing rather than large-scale, high-volume data analytics. Consider a typical MRP re-gen can take hours or days while an APS re-gen usually takes a few seconds. This is a critical usability factor because no planner can afford to wait hours, let alone days, after every schedule change.

Better still, the design and development expertise in an APS system is unique and specialized, and hard to come by. Most ERP development projects leave planning as an afterthought and only address it superficially. APS is all about the details. That’s why most “classic” scheduling in ERP systems goes unused; it is too simplistic to affect real improvement. APS solves critical problems and drives productivity.

Focus on one goal in your APS evaluation: solving your critical business issues. Begin by identifying problems to solve, then determine if the APS can “model” your constraints and, ultimately, solve your problems. Create a priority list of two elements:

(1) Your APS-related critical business issues, and (2) Rules and constraints planners need to consider when creating schedules.

Work with your APS vendor to go through these elements in detail. Then, consider technology, architecture, and total cost of ownership. You need current technology and architecture that fits well with other systems and expertise of IT personnel. Data volume can also be a critical factor. Before choosing a system, verify that it can handle your volume of orders. To be usable, a drag-and-drop reschedule in a fully loaded schedule should be able to shift other work out of the way and take just a few seconds to process, not minutes. Where cost is concerned, implementation costs can be very high for systems that require extensive programming to build models so be sure these costs are considered along with the cost of the software itself. Finally, be sure that if you need multiple planners to be able to login and make changes concurrently and/or if you need support for multi-plant coordination, verify that your APS supports thisunlike ERP, most APS systems are single-planner, single-plant systems—so shop carefully.

PlanetTogether will do a better job of creating accurate schedules that respect all of your constraints (labor, machines, materials, tools, storage).

PlanetTogether is easier to use due to its “capacity constrained drag-and-drop”.

PlanetTogether is based on the flagship Microsoft platform, the .Net Framework, which means it is more familiar to your users (like Microsoft Office), is widely supported, is easier to integrate with, and has a long lifetime ahead of it.

PlanetTogether is the only true “collaborative” scheduling system that allows multiple planners to be logged on and rescheduling simultaneously so you can work the way you need to as your company grows.

Most APS integrations are “bi-directional”, importing data such as: work orders (with attached routings/BOMS/recipes), sale orders, inventory, purchase orders, work centers, equipment, and sometimes employees, and exporting schedule dates for work orders to facilitate ERP visibility and material planning. One thing we’ve learned is that it’s important that integration tools be very flexible since every company uses both their ERP and APS system differently. The typical time to develop an integration from scratch will vary by the amount of data that needs to be shared. We usually expect to spend anywhere from two to four days creating a new integration.