Single-item and small-batch production
In order to be a successful single-item and small-batch producer, it is no longer sufficient to offer high-quality, specialized products due to increasing market requirements in various industries. Therefore, fast, precise and cost-efficient production in single-item and small-batch manufacturing has become indispensable.
Overview
Single-item and small-batch manufacturing is characterized by special features that can make optimal production planning difficult. Amongst others these challenges are:
- Small batches
- Permanent customer-specific change requests
- Highly varying manufacturing processes
- Short-term delivery bottlenecks in external manufacturing
- Custom parts
- Fixed capital through anonymous purchased parts.
Intelligent production planning software supports single-item and small-batch manufacturers through dynamic planning, to cope with these requirements and to react flexibly to unpredictable events.
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Solution FELIOS Features
Complementing your company´s existing PPS/ERP system, FELIOS optimizes the order execution. The intelligent linkage of orders and assignment of all materials across all scheduling steps prevents bottlenecks and uneven resource utilization. FELIOS offers the following key features:
- Planning with limited capacities
Optimal succession of processes taking into account the available capacity.
- Scenario simulation
Changes in quantities, dates and their effects on the current order backlog can be analyzed.
- Automatic and manual planning
Flexibly adjustable frozen zone, manual fixing and prioritization of entire production orders.
- Setup optimization
A summary of identical parts is compiled to reduce setup times.
- Optimized work supply per work station
Intelligent and coordinated work distribution for individual work stations and machine groups.
- Identification of bottlenecks
Practical planning board per work station allows companies to setup alternatives (alternative work stations, outsourcing, extended workbench).
- Optimized scheduling and order release
Proposals for production dates and purchased parts in line with loads and requirements.
- Analyses, key performance indicators and statistics
Automated reporting e.g. for orders, suppliers, materials, productivity and fulfillment levels.
Benefits
FELIOS meets all challenges in single-item and small-batch production that conventional PPS/ERP systems ignore. When implementing FELIOS, your company can expect the following advantages:
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Flexibility
Synchronous and automatic planning processes, which increase flexible working required by an individualized production.
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Better resource utilization
Material flows are coordinated in order to optimally ease load peaks as well as bottlenecks.
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Cross-departmental transparency
Up-to-date information on the processing status of all orders is centrally available for all departments.
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Risk monitoring
Provides all details on parts that are at risk of being delayed. The user receives solution proposals.
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Fast simulation
Various planning scenarios can be carried out in real-time, for example, machine failures or customer inquiries.
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Production cockpit
Quick overview of KPIs such as flow rate, residue development, lead times and bottlenecks, as well as various target-actual comparisons.
Time is Money
Time is Money
Cost inefficiencies and time wasters can be identified in processes, based on key performance indicators such as residue evaluation, missing parts quotas, lead times, expense factor, flow rate or work-in-progress (WIP). These processes can be optimized with FELIOS. Therefore, process-relevant KPIs are identified and visualized according to the company´s requirements.
An example: The time and effort required to create weekly reports in Excel was reduced from 45 minutes to just 15 seconds for a business user.
Success Story: Neumeister Hydraulik
Success Story: Neumeister Hydraulik
The company "Neumeister Hydraulik" is just one example of successful market-synchronous production. The positive effects of FELIOS are shown by the fact that the order growth could be managed without additional administration.
"FELIOS relieves our planners and dispatchers of 80-90% of annoying routine tasks. Thanks to intelligent planning and transparency, we focuse on minimizing risks in the production process, andif something happens, we make the right decisions quickly. We can handle our strong growth with the same team in our order center." Helmut Wöhr, Technical Manager at Neumeister Hydraulik GmbH.
Intelligent Planning offers High Potentials
Intelligent Planning offers High Potentials
Based on the optimization indicators, INFORM has developed benchmarks with which the individual values and KPIs of the future customer can be compared with those of existing FELIOS applications. The optimization gains that a single-item and small-batch producer can achieve become clear as early as the evaluation phase.
We offer all interested companies a qualified, KPI-based overview of these three categories:
- The actual state of production
- Available data quality
- The extensive potential of FELIOS.
References
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