Waterloo Production Scheduling Blog

Your company is interested in purchasing production scheduling or advanced planning and scheduling software. You’ve already contacted and, to some extent, worked with vendors. You know you need to check two references. What should your strategy be, and how should you go about it? Is there really something that you can learn from references, or should your goal be to
simply “check off a box” to satisfy your management?

There are two things to keep in mind. First, vendors are going to do everything in their power to screen out negative references and only give out positive ones. Therefore, any reputable vendor who has been in business for more than a couple of years is going to be able to give you references that will say good things. Second, when a reference takes time out of his or her busy day to share experiences, the reference is doing both you, and the vendor a favor. Since vendors won’t want to impose upon and unduly burden their best customers, they are going to limit the number of references you speak with. Furthermore, if you are as busy as most people who work in production environments, you are not going to have time to talk to numerous references.

So, in practical terms, you are going to have limited chances to talk to references. How do you make the most of these opportunities? One strategy is to ask for references early in the process, and use the references to screen vendors. If you do so, you’ll be squandering an opportunity. At this point in the process, you might not know what the most important issues will be for your intended use of the software. In addition, it will be hard to screen vendors based on references that are going to be hand-picked to be positive.

A far better strategy is to hold off contacting references until near the end of your evaluation. Evaluating complex software such as advanced planning and scheduling can be an involved process. Don’t try to make a choice immediately. Share with your vendor your goals for the software, how your operations are structured, who will be using the software, and the data that you have available. Educate the vendor so that, in turn, they can educate you on how their production scheduling software might apply in your environment. How well a vendor works with you prior to the sale is a good indicator of what it will be like after you’ve paid the vendor’s invoice. As advocated elsewhere in this blog, working with your vendor on a sample production scheduling model prior to the sale can be invaluable in determining if the software, and the vendor, will meet your needs.

While the process of working with a vendor prior to the sale can be invaluable, it won’t answer all of your questions. In fact the process most likely will produce questions that hadn’t occurred to you earlier. Many of the questions will be fairly general, but more than a few will be specific to how you plan to apply the advanced planning and scheduling software to your environment.

Share your questions with your vendor’s sales staff! If your vendor understands your questions, they can take steps to get you answers. A smart vendor will listen to your questions, and match you up with references who have dealt with the same issues that you are raising.

While it would be ideal for your vendor to match you up with a reference “just like you”, it pays to look beyond the superficial. Companies in similar industries often go about satisfying their customers in very different ways. Also, just because two a companies are in the same industry doesn’t mean that they necessarily have the same goals for the production scheduling software. One might want software for scheduling over a short horizon, while the other may want to do longer range planning. While the references your vendor introduces to you may be in a different industry, below the surface you may have much in common.

What kind of questions might you want to ask production scheduling and advanced planning and scheduling references? Below is a list of less obvious questions that might be helpful:

• How well did the production scheduling / advanced planning and scheduling software meet your expectations?
• How well has the vendor kept promises made to you before you purchased?
• How smooth was the handoff between the vendor’s sales staff and implementation staff?
• How responsive have the vendor’s support and development staffs been to issues which have arisen and to enhancement requests?
• How expert in the software are the vendor’s consulting and implementation staff, and how quickly have this staff picked up the nuances of your business?
• How did you make use of the vendor’s staff during your implementation?
• Did the vendor help you draft an implementation plan, and if so, how useful was it?
• How smooth and problem free was your implementation?
• What kind of unplanned expenses and costs were passed on to you?
• What business benefits did the production scheduling / advanced planning and scheduling software help you achieve, and how quickly did you get those benefits?

You’re thinking about implementing a production scheduling, production planning, or Advanced Planning and Scheduling software. You know these systems need the right kind of data to be successful. Do you have the data you need? If not, how do you go about getting it? Once you have the data, what is the best way to store, maintain, and access it?

Advanced Planning and Scheduling systems have a reputation for requiring excessive data. Whether or not this is true depends upon the capabilities of your scheduling system, and your goals for it. Ideally, you will have picked a vendor with deep experience helping customers be successful in a wide range of different industries. This experience should have bred a sensible approach to scheduling embodied in a practical production scheduling software product.

As is generally the case with most real world problems, the most workable approach to scheduling is to “start simple” and to build on success. With respect to data, this approach involves starting initially with minimal amounts of data, and augmenting and refining the data over time. The “start simple and build strategy” makes particular sense for data since it costs money (time, effort) to collect and maintain data, and you only want to access data that is truly useful. To support this strategy, initially your production scheduling software should be able to generate decent schedules with minimal data. However, the software should also give you the capability to add and refine data over time, and to see corresponding increases in schedule accuracy.

What data do you need to start with?

1. Primary resources to schedule – can be machines, tooling, people or material.
2. When the resources are available – i.e. their calendars and shifts.
3. Routings – the steps or operations orders go through in their production. For each step, the duration each resource is required.
4. Requirements to schedule – often called orders. Typically, an order has a quantity and a due date.
5. Priority – some “rule” which determines the sequence in which orders and / or operations are scheduled. For example, one simple priority rule is earliest due date.

What data should you be able to add over time? The software should be able to handle all of the data required to model both your operation and the way you want to schedule that operation. Different industries can have unique data needs. Below are a half a dozen examples of different types of data:

• Additional resources which are required along with the primary resource to perform an operation. Examples might be labor, tooling and material in combination with a primary machine.
• Groups of alternate resources that are able to perform an operation.
• Complex relationships between operations in a routing. For example, sequential, overlap, parallel as well as complex networks of operations.
• Characteristics by which operations should be grouped, sequenced, and scheduled back to back on a resource to reduce set up time. Also, the associated time penalty that occurs when changes in characteristics occur.
• Characteristics of operations that can be grouped together for batch processing, for instance in ovens. Also, the associated oven capacity.
• Values that determine how an operation should be split over machines with similar capabilities.

Where can you obtain production scheduling related data? The first place to look is your business system (ERP system), or other company data bases. Systems such as these should provide the basic data needed to generate initial production schedules. Unfortunately, production scheduling is an afterthought in most ERP systems. Therefore, rarely are such systems designed to hold the more detailed data that might be required to refine your production schedules.

If you need detailed data, you are probably going to need to turn to the true experts – your shop floor staff and industrial engineering group. Often these staff members will hold the data you need in their heads, or in personal data bases (e.g. in Excel).

Once your data is identified, the next step is to get it into an easily acceptable electronic format. One option is to add this data to your business / ERP system or company data base in unused or user defined fields.

An alternative to adding scheduling related data to your ERP system or company data base is to add it directly to your production scheduling or Advanced Planning and Scheduling system. The scheduling system should be designed for easy data input. In addition, it should have features designed for easy maintenance and change of bills of material and routings, which is where most of the specialized scheduling related data resides.

How should you access the data? Some data is best held and maintained in company ERP and business systems, and other data is best held and maintained in the Advanced Planning and Scheduling software. Your scheduling software should contain interface tools for transferring data easily and efficiently between systems. In addition, the software should have rules for merging different data from different sources in a seamless manner (e.g. combining data resident in the scheduling system with data transferred from ERP).

So, how can you satisfy the data needs of your production planning and scheduling system? By starting with readily available data and collecting more complex, detailed data over time, by storing the data in the system that makes the most sense, and by using the data transfer and data merging capability of your Advanced Planning and Scheduling system to pull the data together for effective use.

You’ve seen slick demonstrations of good looking software.  You think a production scheduling / advanced planning and scheduling system might improve your business.  But you want to be sure.  How do you know if a vendor and their product can really help?  Ask the vendor, but be prepared to think through some potentially difficult issues.

 Advanced planning and production scheduling is an incredibly powerful technology, but it is not a magic wand.  The technology doesn’t fit in all environments, and it can’t solve all business problems.  Depending upon the specifics of your operation, advanced planning and scheduling can also be a bit tricky to implement.  To know if the technology can help in your environment, you both need a roadmap on where you want to go, and be able and willing to dig into the details.

 Some production environments are simple and straightforward, and your operations might fit into this category.  However, your plant might also have unique twists or rules that influence how work gets done.  These unique characteristics may be “how we’ve always done things”, and therefore, be ripe for change and simplification.  However, many of the unique aspects of how you manufacturer product are unique for a reason.  You’ve developed proprietary processes over the years that give you an advantage over your competition.  In order to be successful, your planning and scheduling software needs to be able to capture and reflect the legitimate intricacies of your business.

 So, how do you know if a production scheduling solution can solve your problems?  You build a sample model, and use the model to test the application the software to your real world situation.

Any reputable, experienced vendor understands that a sample model is the only way to truly know how well the software will fit you.  If the vendor won’t work with you on a sample model, either they don’t know how to build one (maybe they are a marginally trained distributor), or they have something to hide.  Whichever is the case, if they aren’t willing to work with you, find another vendor.

 While your vendor should be willing to work with you on a sample advanced planning and production scheduling model, any vendor worth his or her salt is going to have strong ideas on how the process should work.  These strong opinions should be based on experience building similar sample models for other customers.  At a minimum, if you haven’t done so already, the vendor should insist that you:

• Involve in the process staff members who might either use the software directly, or use the output from the software.  The only way you are going to develop good criteria for evaluating the sample model is by getting important users and decision makers lined up.
• Get consensus as to your organization’s specific, measurable goals for the planning and scheduling software.  These goals will influence how the sample model is built and will guide the justification of the technology.
• Get commitment to help from staff which might be responsible for providing the planning and scheduling system with required data.  Sources of data might range from formal company data bases to informal data held in the head of shop floor staff.  Planning and scheduling software won’t work without proper data, and if the proper data isn’t available, why bother with the exercise?
• Get sanctioning from decision makers.  Again, why bother with the exercise if decision makers aren’t on board.

 Building a representative sample model is a significant undertaking.  You should plan on considerable amounts of your time to educate the vendor on the details of your operation.  While the sample model will require effort on your part, please remember that the vendor’s investment will be much greater both in real and proportionate terms.  Depending upon the magnitude of the investment that your situation requires, the vendor might ask you for one or more of the following:

• The explicit criteria which you will use to make your decision
• Your criteria for justifying the software (if you think you’ll have trouble justifying, get help from your vendor)
• The specific steps in your decision making process
• The specific steps needed to approve an expenditure for the software and associated services.
• A commitment that you will purchase if the sample model adequately addresses your needs
• A purchase order for services to help defray the cost of building the sample model.

 While building a sample advanced planning and production scheduling model is not free in terms of time and potentially money, the process should help you understand:

• The data needs of the software.
• How your data will  look in the software
• How the software will be used on a periodic basis (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly)
• How the software will be used to solve specific organizational problems
• What your organizational training needs are
• What the implementation of the software will look like
• In round numbers, how much it will cost to purchase and implement the software and what the economic benefits of the purchase will be

 Building a sample model will greatly reduce the risk that you purchase a technology that won’t help you reach your goals or won’t work properly in your environment.

In the previous post, we discussed major potential “gotchas” associated with purchasing advanced planning and scheduling software for production planning and production scheduling from ERP / MRP vendors.  We previously discussed a case where the planning and scheduling software was made available through a “partnership” agreement with a third party vendor.  In this post we’ll discuss “gotchas” when the ERP vendor owns the technology.

A major “gotcha” can occur when the ERP vendor has acquired their planning and scheduling technology through an acquisition of another company.  In recent years there has been tremendous consolidation in the ERP / MRP space.  ERP vendors have acquired production planning and production scheduling vendors.  The acquiring ERP vendors have since themselves been acquired by other ERP vendors, sometimes multiple times.  Often these acquisitions are driven by financial and marketing concerns rather than a desire to build a rational and technically sound product line. 

With every acquisition, consolidation of product lines and staff occurs, and application expertise departs.  Due to all the acquisition activity, some vendors have been left with a pile of different applications puzzle pieces.  Rarely do these puzzle pieces fit into any kind of a coherent whole.  Prospective customers interested in the technology are left with applications that aren’t truly integrated, and vendor staff who don’t know their own products. 

Another major pitfall involves vendors who have developed advanced planning and scheduling software to cover their competitive flanks.  Typically, these vendors are large and have deep pockets.  While these vendors may be able to assign top notch programming talent to developing production planning and production scheduling software, they still need application experience to know what needs to be developed.  Strong development capability doesn’t translate in a deep base of domain experience or experience implementing with real world customers.  The situation is compounded by the fact that, unlike MRP, there is no published, standard, well accepted, set of product features that an advanced planning and scheduling system should have.  The best planning and scheduling applications have been developed over many years by vendors dedicated to the technology with significant feedback from customers “in the field”. 

Vendors with no affinity for the technology often develop applications that look great on the surface.  However, when you dig into them, you find they lack depth and are full of functional holes.  Furthermore, when you implement, you’ll often find that there is no one at the vendor who truly understands the application, or who has the necessary experience to make customers successful.

So as not to get burned, ask the following questions: Will you prototype the planning and scheduling application with my data and show it dealing with my scheduling issues?  Can you show me data moving from the ERP system to the planning and scheduling system and back again?  How will the planning and scheduling application be loaded on my computers?  Can I talk to references that will vouch for the success of the application?  Can I see the resumes / CVs of the staff responsible for implementing?  How many successful planning and scheduling implementations have they managed?

Unsatisfactory answers to any questions should be cause for serious concern.  Be particularly wary of vendors that tell you not to worry about production planning and production scheduling until after the rest of the ERP system is up and running.  Don’t fall for this sales technique often used to hide product weaknesses, or lack of planning and scheduling expertise.  If you are interested in planning and scheduling, make sure the vendor demonstrates the software to you up front, with your data, and shows how the application will solve your real world problems.

You have just bought, or are planning to soon buy a new, state of the art ERP system. Congratulations! It should be able to do everything that you might need, right? Particularly in the area of production planning and production scheduling, right? Depending upon what you are hoping to achieve, maybe.

The classical MRP / ERP planning paradigm consists of backward scheduling work orders through the various levels of the bill of material. Each work order operation has an associated load and lead time. Capacity planning modules spread the load over the lead time, helping you spot imbalances between hours of available capacity and hours of load. While such modules don’t schedule and do have trouble accurately predicting when load will occur, they do give you some limited visibility into potential capacity shortages. If this is all you want out of your ERP / MRP system, you should be all set.

However, many practitioners want more, much more. They hope to model their capacity finitely. When operations are scheduled, they want work to be constrained by the finite capacity of machines, tooling, labor and other resources, and materials. If capacity is unavailable, they want work to be shifted out in time, and along with it the predicted order completion date. They want to see completion dates compared to requirement dates to predict how well customer needs will be met. They want to use the software to perform what-if analysis so that the best business decisions are made under various scenarios. They want to apply this finite capacity scheduling, or advanced planning and scheduling capability, over any duration production planning and production scheduling horizon.

Not all ERP vendors make finite capacity scheduling / advanced planning and scheduling a standard product offering. If you want such capability, you may have to ask for it. Even if your vendor does have it and can make it available to you, there are some “gotchas” to look out for.

Why should there even be an issue, you ask? Advanced planning and scheduling software is a specialized application. It takes specialized knowledge to effectively develop or acquire, integrate, deploy, and implement the technology. The most successful advanced planning and scheduling vendors and applications have developed this expertise over years in the marketplace.

When buying advanced planning and scheduling software from your ERP vendor, a major “gotcha” can occur when the technology isn’t owned by your vendor, but is made available to you via some kind of “partner” relationship. Whether or not you get “burned” will be determined by whether the partnership is a marriage or a speed date.

To find out, you might need to ask: Is production planning and production scheduling software truly integrated with the ERP / MRP system? If so, show me how? How many projects have the vendors worked on together? Can I talk to references that can vouch for the success? How will the partners divide up the responsibility of helping me be successful? How strong is the partnership, and if it dissolves, what happens to me? Unsatisfactory answers to any questions should be cause for serious concern.