An Alternative to Planning on Spreadsheets
Orchestrate offers an easy to use, affordable, planning and scheduling solution for developing key business plans - from Supply Chain Optimisation (SCO) to Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) for the shop floor. It offers a real alternative to using overcomplicated ERP modules or basic spreadsheets.
In a competitive world, there is pressure to concentrate on continuous improvements. At a high level, companies need to constantly review their supply chain planning, regularly assessing which factories or which production lines are required. At the production level, companies must review factory performance to schedule and manage the factory more effectively. The requirement to plan and review the plan's underlying assumptions has never been greater.
However, this drive for improvement is hindered by one key factor - the lack of effective planning tools. Despite the widespread adoption of ERP systems, when it comes to planning and scheduling most companies find significant gaps in their core system functionality. The majority of companies recognise that this problem exists. A review of any recent IT industry survey will show that companies are either looking to get more out of their existing systems, or for something outside their existing systems.
The result is that despite having made major investments in IT, key planning and scheduling activities are still undertaken manually on a planning board or using a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets can become complicated and hard to understand and it takes almost a full week to produce next week's plan.
Despite the drawbacks with this approach, managers believe that specialised planning modules are too complicated in terms of integration and application, and over priced, and that the more general planning systems are inappropriate.
Problems with spreadsheet systems often include:
- complexity
- reliance on an expert user
- time consuming
- lack of plan visibility
People continue to use these methods because:
- there is insufficient cost benefit in a high end, specialised planning module
- the more general planning systems are not up to the job
- they require features that are not available in planning systems
Orchestrate turns this argument on its head. Production Modelling has produced a cost-effective and easy-to-use solution that can effectively help any company in various areas of planning and scheduling.
With the latest version of Orchestrate we have developed a solution that offers a viable alternative.
