Production Scheduling Software for Enterprise Manufacturers

The Value of Fast Optimization

Fast Optimization is a superior scheduling technology, but when we factor in cost, will it represent the best value for your organization?

Heuristic Scheduling Solutions – Low Startup Costs, but Huge Total Cost of Ownership

At a first glance, heuristic scheduling solutions seem like the best value because the software subscription fees are lower. But you will quickly realize that the schedules, heuristic APS solutions generate, will not have enough accuracy to be directly implemented into production on your factory floor. You will need an entire team of schedulers to adjust them manually.

If you are an enterprise manufacturer, with a complex scheduling challenge, this will be a large team of schedulers. When these additional scheduling labor costs are factored in, the total operating expense or total cost of ownership of heuristic scheduling software grows exponentially.

Custom Coded Systems – High Startup and Maintenance Costs

There is another option when it comes to scheduling solutions … custom coded systems. In the past, the only way you could introduce optimization into your scheduling process was to build your own scheduling system. And that is exactly what many enterprise manufacturers with deep pockets did.

Custom coded systems can be fast and accurate. But they are not true Fast Optimization APS solutions because they are stagnant. If your environment changes, if you introduce a new class of products, a new line of equipment, or a new business rule … you will need to manually adjust the source code of your entire production scheduling system. There is no constraint library that would allow you to make these changes on the fly.

Equally importantly, the cost of building and maintaining a custom-coded APS system is enormous. It costs no less than a million dollars to build this system. Assembling your coding team every time you need to make a minor change to your production environment also adds to the cost substantially. When you decide to scale, the rigidity of the code will make deploying this solution in different factory configurations globally very challenging.

Finally, system upgrades are another guaranteed expense. When a portfolio of clients, including you, work with an APS vendor, like Optessa, they indirectly share the cost of the development and maintenance of the APS software. But when your organization owns the scheduling custom-coded APS system alone, then the full burden falls on your IT department.

Fast Optimization – Medium Startup Costs, Huge Value

Fast Optimization software yearly subscription fees will fall somewhere in between those of heuristic and custom scheduling software. But the total cost of ownership will be significantly lower and the value you derive will be much higher. How is this possible?

When you create a schedule with Fast Optimization it is mathematically guaranteed to be the most accurate schedule possible. This means that you do not need any manual adjustments. You can execute it directly on the shop floor as soon as it is generated. This will significantly reduce the labor requirements of the scheduling team and result in tremendous cost savings.

And, if your production environment changes, and it will … your schedulers will have the ability to quickly adjust the model through drag and drop configuration in the software. You will avoid the high costs of deploying your software development team to adjust code every time there is a change.

Finally, Fast Optimization software is powerful but intuitive enough to be used by junior schedulers. This means that you can re-assign senior schedulers to work on more advanced value add activities for the organization and save money on the more routine, operational scheduling processes.