Production Planning Software
MJC² ScheduleZ Faster
Food manufacturing operations are notoriously difficult to schedule - special offers and rapid changes in demand force manufacturers and distributors of food and other short shelf-life and fast turnover products into hectic rescheduling of their operations.
A single food line might have the capacity to manufacture 400 types of products, and every change of product requires rescheduling the supply of numerous raw materials.
MJC² was tasked with developing a new production planning software solution to address the complex manufacturing operations of KP Snacks and Compal.
Compal is a world-leading manufacturer of fruit and vegetable juices, while KP Snacks is a major producer of branded and own-label snacks.
What does ScheduleZ do?
ScheduleZ copes with the complexities of the manufacturing operation while allowing faster response to customers' changing demands.
Shop floor managers in food manufacturing plants spend much of their time trying to juggle customers' rapidly changing demands for an often random range of products.
As many producers of fast turnover foods promise to meet customers' orders within 24 hours, they have to rapidly clean their production lines and switch them to different products before they can supply the correct raw materials and packaging materials from a vast range of possibilities.
Production Planning Solution
The ScheduleZ production planning software defines the production patterns that are needed to maintain the correct stock levels of different products, so that the programme can take account of the effect of a schedule on stocks as it works out the best production plan.
ScheduleZ includes a set of schedule frameworks which allow factories to continue with their existing work patterns and practices within ScheduleZ systems, modelling scheduling parameters, machine configuration, manufacturing constraints and product information.
The optimization algorithm takes account of constraints such as speed of bagging and the earliest possible start of production, changeover targets, unavailability, employee shift patterns and the pre-assignment of resources.
The ScheduleZ solution uses MJC²'s PIMSS software, a key module in our overall supply chain optimization toolset.