Business is going well. Your customers are happy so they keep coming back: revenue goes up. You manage your inventory well: costs go down. That improves your margins and the money you earn goes back into growing the business. But then the production line suddenly comes under intense pressure.
It’s easy to plan on the assumption you have infinite resources but in the real world you don’t. There are limits on space and time, on the number of people available to do jobs for you, and on the ability of suppliers to react to your needs. You tinker and adjust but there are always bottlenecks.
Finite Planning enables you to identify those bottlenecks and helps you work out what to do about them. It lets you try out changes and simulate their effect on the way your business works. You helps you decide whether it is better to let some areas become temporarily overloaded or to reschedule orders so that delivery times are longer, but more reliable.
In recognising that your resources are finite, Finite Planning gives you more accurate delivery times, and improves efficiency. It enables you to make better decisions when things get tight.
- In MRP (materials requirements planning) it lets you prioritize one job over another recalculates the bottlenecks based on the exact time a proposal becomes a formal order.
- When back-to-back sales and manufacturing orders are created automatically, Finite Planning will check for restrictions in dates when items can be delivered and that the delivery date reflects this.
- You can reschedule to ease overloads and give priority to the most important customers or the most pressing orders.
Ideas generated by Finite Planning to alleviate the effects of bottlenecks can be simulated and the results viewed graphically in Planner View. The same tool can be used to view orders as they progress, so you can compare real life with your simulations.