AVAILABLE NOW! Siemens Opcenter APS 18

We are excited to announce the availability of Siemens Opcenter APS 18! As a result of a manufacturing operations management…

APQR — Advanced Planning Quality Radar: Excellence in Closed Loop Quality

It is essential for automotive manufacturers to build a quality plan to deliver a robust product and to satisfy customer…

NOW AVAILABLE: Preactor APS version 17.2

We are excited to announce the latest version of Preactor APS has been released! Version 17.2 features improvements to Advanced Planning, material pegging and Gantt interaction.
Preactor software…

Empowering the Planner

“Not knowing that it was impossible, he went there and did it.” This adaptation of a great quote from the French thinker Jean Cocteau still seems to be the only modus operandi for companies large and…

ERP – Making the Investment Work using APS

The materials war has been won (via MRP and/or Kanban control), the capacity war has just started. Companies with a high cost of raw materials and/or high value of end products are trying to move tow…

The Leanest Lean You Have Ever Seen

Lean manufacturing represents a cultural change at all levels of a company. Its prime objective is to eliminate waste, whatever form that takes. The most obvious examples in the production area might…

Crossing the Chasm from ERP to APS

Today we well know that, with few exceptions, ERP systems assume adequate resources are available when required, i.e. resources have infinite capacity. ERP systems have a BOM exploder and inventory c…

A Crystal Ball for the Supply Chain: Bringing Current and Future Capacity into the Delivery Equation

In companies all over the world there is a trend that seems to be common. Competition is increasing both from the company’s traditional competitors and from new entrants to the market place, often fr…

Key facts and essentials for implementing an APS system

Software companies invested millions developing-high end APS solutions that claimed to “optimize” the way a plant was scheduled. Most of these systems failed miserably in the real world. Why? Because…