Short-term Scheduling for Production and Quality Control Labs
In the age of disruption, effective production planning and optimization approaches are even more critical to ramping up or down production, or pivoting to production of new products. To future proof operations, a robust planning and scheduling approach is a key foundation to the factory of the future. This is especially true for Life Science manufacturers who have the added complexity of Production, Quality Control Labs, and R&D. These all need to be coordinated on their own, but are also interdependent on each other and need to be optimized collectively.
From a planning and scheduling perspective, the short-term plans and schedules are typically lacking visibility or the required real-time feedback on changing constraints to be truly effective. If you’re like most manufacturers, then your plant and supply chain are undoubtedly operating at some level of effectiveness today. Still, questions remain. How quickly are you able to identify a change in constraints, availability of materials, and resources, equipment? And how quickly can you react to any of those changes or simulate potential scenarios in advance so you can keep the plant operating efficiently and keep promises to customers?
Prioritizing Production Planning and Optimization
As it turns out, we find that more than 50% of manufactures are still doing their short-term planning and scheduling in spreadsheets, which has many disadvantages and can be difficult to maintain.
This is where Production Planning and Optimization or (APS) plays a key role in Life Sciences by planning and optimizing capacity simultaneously with labor certifications, shelf life of material, equipment resources, maintenance and laying out schedules using a finite capacity approach.
I will be discussing and demonstrating an effective and sustainable approach to production planning and scheduling optimization for the Life Science industry in the upcoming weeks. Click below to register for our webinar series for insight on “How to address the current market challenges in the Life Sciences industry?”
Part 1: Manufacturing. Intelligent Planning, Scheduling, & Manufacturing Excellence in Life Sciences Part 2: Laboratory. Improve Your Laboratory Efficiency and Streamlining Planning Processes.
