Master Production Scheduling — It's a Balancing Act

Master schedulers are tasked with managing the master production schedule (MPS) for end items to meet expected demand, while respecting material and capacity constraints and achieving desired finished goods inventory management targets. That's a lot to balance when everything is changing.

Problem

Whether it is a demand adjustment (forecast change, order change, new order), supply risk (supply disruption, material or capacity constraint change) or a product change (engineering change, new product introduction), MPS misalignments are the norm, not the exception. Quick and effective course corrections are a critical responsibility of the master scheduler, yet often they are ill-equipped to effectively manage the challenge.

Need

The master scheduler must be armed with tools capable of enabling them to skillfully realign supply to stated demand on a monthly, weekly, daily and near real-time basis. This requires modeling the complete supply chain, from finished goods, down through the bill of material, across sites, and even down to the internal supply chain of contract manufacturers, if applicable.

In addition, master schedulers must be able to analyze the impact of a change, evaluate resolution scenarios, and dynamically adjust the master schedule to demand and/or the supply plan as and when needed. And the actions must be evaluated against business objectives and overall financial and operations performance targets of the company.

Click to see it for yourself!

Solution

RapidResponse® contains numerous MPS capabilities:

Create the master schedule with all necessary input data including parts, BOMs, demands, supplies, allocations, and inventories
Access information and build/translate the master schedule for:
- Different organizational levels (global, regional, business unit, production facility)
- Different manufacturing models (make to stock, configure to order, and make to order)
- Different time buckets (monthly, weekly, daily)
With a control tower solution, perform master production scheduling in same system as connected functions such as material requirements planning (MRP), capacity planning, order promising, procurement planning, outsourcing planning, and S&OP to ensure alignment across planning processes
Immediately identify and resolve demand and supply imbalances through robust simulations, allowing users to create, share and compare multiple scheduling scenarios against a baseline
Perform ad hoc "what-if" analysis to support key operational and strategic decisions such as demand upside flexibility, component "where-used" evaluations, and BOM comparisons

Benefits

Increased master scheduler efficiency and effectiveness
Increased customer service levels
Reduced inventory
Improved margins