Using 
Getting Started is Easy
Orchestrate comes ready to use. All you have to do is fill in some predefined data templates and you are ready to start optimising your plans and schedules.
There are predefined templates covering a variety of applications including Manufacturing, Supply Chain Planning, and Laboratory Scheduling.
If you can’t find a template that exactly fits your needs, then don’t worry. You can customise Orchestrate or we can do it for you.
Through the integration of Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications, Orchestrate can be adapted to help with virtually any planning or scheduling problem. Although this means that Orchestrate can be customised especially for you, there is a very quick way to get started. There are four steps:
Orchestrate is delivered with a number of predefined data templates that have been configured in Microsoft Excel. This means that as long as you can get data into Excel, then you need only choose the appropriate data template and Orchestrate is ready for you to use.
Click here for information on the pre-configured data templates and other data formats.
At the click of a button, Orchestrate will produce a first pass plan that you can see on a Gantt chart. This first pass plan may be as simple as sequencing customer orders in due date sequence and may be enough in some applications. However Orchestrate can do much more.
Orchestrate offers powerful optimisation routines that can help you to produce the plan that best meets your business objectives. For example, you may wish to reduce the cost in the supply chain, or you may wish to reduce the customer lead time or you may wish to improve due date compliance. Orchestrate already includes many business objectives, and almost any Key Performance Indicators can be included.
Click here to find out more about Orchestrate’s optimisation
Gantt Chart Visualisation. The user can select colour filters to show different aspects odf the plan. For instance in the example above, colour is used to reflect different products.
In any planning environment, the planner has to stay in control. Not least because there will always be situations that are not covered in the system data. For example we may know that a particular job could actually be done on a particular machine even though it is not in the data. In this case, the planner would simply drag and drop the job onto the desired machine. He can then see the effect on the plan and in particular on other jobs in the plan.
Orchestrate contains a range of statistics and metrics that are often used to measure the effectiveness of a plan or schedule. As standard, Orchestrate measures periodic loading (i.e daily, weekly, monthly loads), machine utilisation, losses due to downtime and setup, the number of late orders, the order make span and the order lead time.
Standard graph showing the number of late tasks on the plan.
Once a plan has been created, any Orchestrate user can review it and use it - without destroying the base plan - as a basis for their own “what-if” analysis. Orchestrate helps to communicate key information throughout the business. The sales director can find out when a particular order is planned to finish. The business analysts can find out what would happen if they launch a new product. The industrial engineers can find out what would happen if they purchase a new machine. The opportunities are endless.
And of course, Orchestrate can produce a “work-to list” that can be issued to the shop floor on a day to day basis.
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