Our planning & optimisation software spans the whole food supply chain, including raw material sourcing and negotiation, manufacturing, warehousing, distribution and stock management. In the modern supply chain environment it is no longer sufficient to divide these functions and optimise them in isolation. Our planning & scheduling tools allow large-scale operations to gain a substantial competitive advantage by optimising using an integrated approach.

Implementations of our manufacturing planning & scheduling toolset PIMSS have led to enormous savings for our customers in terms of improved manufacturing capacities, faster and better response to customer demand, lower stocking levels and balanced use of resources. The flexibility of our production planning systems allows us to approach optimisation problems which are well beyond the range of standard, package-based scheduling systems. PIMSS is designed to schedule very complex manufacturing operations which may have many independent or interdependent production lines producing thousands of different SKUs on a regular basis. It may be integrated with our inventory optimisation system e-Stock to balance stocking levels against known and forecast orders, leading to reductions in warehousing costs while balancing factory throughputs.

MJC²'s distribution scheduling and vehicle routing toolset DISC can schedule large, complex logistics networks, automatically optimising transport while taking account of all operational constraints such as load building constraints, warehouse-related constraints, drivers' hours rules, vehicle suitability, load compatibility, etc. DISC schedules the entire distribution network using an integrated approach which includes deliveries, collections, inter-depot trunking movements, spot hire work, sub-contractors, backhauls, transhipments, etc. Integration with our dynamic transport scheduling and vehicle tracking solution REACT enables automatic dynamic re-optimisation in response to last-minute orders, delays, breakdowns, cancellations, etc., while our mobile workforce management and PDA-based data capture solution MOBi provides real-time data communication between drivers and the planning office, including proof-of-delivery (POD), driver de-brief and incident reporting.

Our planning tools are fully customisable and may be configured to accurately model and schedule the food supply chain, taking account of all business and operational constraints. Based on advanced optimisation algorithms, our scheduling systems can produce detailed daily, weekly or monthly schedules within seconds or minutes, allowing the operation to respond rapidly to changes such as last minute orders or breakdowns while maximising efficiency and customer service levels.