Trends in production planning for 2014
We give you an outlook on trends, challenges and developments in the field of production planning and control (PPS) for 2014: The variety of products continues to increase due to the change in consumer behaviour. Companies are challenged to improve processes in order to secure their pole position ahead of the competition. Because if you can deliver more reliably and more cheaply, you win, especially when there are bottlenecks.
In our opinion, manufacturing companies are confronted with the following developments and challenges:
Production companies are under increasing pressure to meet the demand and requirements of their customers. They expect constant readiness to deliver with an increasingly changing assortment and decreasing quantities per article. This is particularly noticeable at times of high demand, such as a heat wave in summer, an early onset of winter or seasonal events in the year. With conventional planning, production cannot then react quickly enough to short-term orders, changes, bottlenecks or breakdowns.
Companies must become more adaptable in their production and still continue to produce cost-effectively in order to remain competitive. Optimizing production planning must be at the top of your priority list.
The following trends can be identified for production planning:
1. increase of productive times through set-up time optimization.
2. planning systems must be able to map operational processes and their dependencies.
3. companies see themselves more under pressure when it comes to durability.
4. Modern production planning makes separation into rough and detailed planning superfluous.
5. future planning systems use alternatives