Industry

Demand Planning and Demand Planning in Season

This tool, integrated in the I-RAMS platform, is specifically developed for managing the demand in an industrial environment. Its target is to share the demand forecasting amongst all the industrial key members, so that the activities can be planned according to the demand dynamics. The sales history is the core data to manage the demand planning. The statistical analysis and the forecasting calculus in sales is processed not only on aggregate level (channel, macro SKU, market, etc.) but also on a lower level, by maintaining congruous quantities forecast. The most advanced forecasting techniques can be used in an easy and intuitive way with keeping technical and numerical rigorous.
The problems, like seasonality, unexpected events, commercial campaigns, and life cycle, are always calculated to give the most accurate forecast that permits an accurate budgeting inside the logistic and the production structure.
Powerful clustering and picking tools allow to identify special clients, and give them special treatments due to campaign/seasonality requirements (for example fashion and apparel businesses). Obviously the results of a sales plan can be used as an input to build a production plan.
More attention has been given to Planning in Season issues, in fact people that work in fashion environment (wear, shoes accessories, ect) have to face the problem to perform demand forecast and production schedule using poor or missing historical data and consequently take a big risk to do big estimation mistakes, especially when they focus on SKU. I-RAMS platform offers a specific methodology in order to manage theese situation giving a sturdy statistical results confidence during first season weeks and so drive and correct production schedule due to market variability.

RAISE

RAISE module, acronym of the Resource Assignment and Integrated Shipping Enviroment, is the last extension of the I-Rams platform, developed in direct cooperation with ORS and its customers. RAISE focuses on matching sales department requirements with logistic planning, offering the best technological and mathematics solutions.
The business needs of the sales and logistic departments can be traced to a model which consist of a Demand part (sales department) integrated with Supply part (logistic/planning). This tool allows the two departments to describe, parameterize and configure the two parts (Demand and Supply). This powerful optimization engine, completely developed by ORS, allows to determinate the “best configuration” by matching the two sides: the demand (pending orders) and the supply (availability of products to be delivered). The combinations between orders and wares are calculated on various time horizons: from very small (real time) to the mid/long term (less than 1 year). This allows also simulations to be made about the shipping sceneries that are constricted by the demand forecasting on one side, and the production planning on the other side (work in progress).

RAISE is not a replacement of the ERP system but an instrument that interface with it and allows you to concentrate all logic and parameters decision-making for the movement of goods in one flexible, powerful and easily customizable cost-competitive, compared to other solutions or strategies. Adopting the RAISE system within your industrial reality allows you to reach important result such as:

• Optimizing the allocation of the stock in the stores
• Advance of the separation of the goods in finished goods warehouse
• Reactivity of the logistics network to outside interference
• Change and flexibility of the rules of ware distribution
• Dynamic relationship management of the importance between customers and types of order
• Improvement of logistic KPI
• Increased service level offered to the clients at the same resource usage

Production Scheduler

The Scheduler target is to sequence operations in a department and/or production line, in order to achieve the desired results in terms of finished or semi-finished product production. I-RAMS offers a specific solution facing the scheduling task, including various modules to cover the entire process:

Demand manager – a module built for calculating and managing the production demand. On a strategic level, the demand could be calculated analyzing the sales from a forecasting point of view or a budget one. On a short term tactical level this demand is represented by client or production orders.

Resource Manager – a module built to describe the industrial reality by modeling the plant structure. The detail level could be pushed until a very micro level by describing a single machine or processing setup or the exceptions on particular processes, machines or products. The module manages also the calendar structure by considering variables like festivities, scheduled or unscheduled maintenance, strikes, shifts, etc.

Scheduling – The target of this module is obviously to create temporary allocation time in order to determinate the work sequence and calculate their time , allowing everything to run smoothly with no “bottlenecks” or production overlaps. The motor of this module is built to find the best solution, considering all the custom constraints and targets by calculating many indicators at the same time:

• Minimizing of the Makespan
• Minimizing of the Setup time
• Minimizing of the Job Average Lateness
• Minimizing of the Priority Weighted Average Job Completion Time
• Maximizing of the Average Machine Work Covering Rate

Production Planning

The target of this software consists in planning the maximum production of a company, considering the constraints of production capacity, raw materials, and the demand. The solution is achieved by using a custom build mathematical model that consists of an objective function, subject to a number of constraints that should be maximized or minimized. By identifying this production plan shared among various company departments, the company can find out the best raw material supply plan and sizing of the production capacity. The tool has a very user-friendly graphic interface that allows the user to analyze several planning scenery , try different setups, constraints and targets, with a very low amount of effort.
The availability of clear and understandable reports allow you to analyze and point out the result of the simulation by highlighting alerting critical situations such as excess in production capacity, unavailability of raw material, increase in pending orders etc.