{"id":1142,"date":"2020-04-08T15:12:41","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T19:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/siemens-opcenter\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2026-03-26T05:01:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T09:01:31","slug":"how-important-is-production-scheduling-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/how-important-is-production-scheduling-today\/","title":{"rendered":"How important is production scheduling today?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Published on behalf of:<\/em>
Frederico Madrid
CEO at Antal Munnyal
Antal Munnyal is a certified Smart Partner in Mexico dedicated to implementing Planning, Scheduling, and Manufacturing Execution Systems
www.antalm.com.xm<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our uncertain world today, factories are facing high levels of variability from both the external market demand and availability of labor resources.\u00a0 In view of this uncertainty, Production Scheduling software<\/a> systems are of tremendous importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day, the last decision made before\nproduction is always related to scheduling, i.e., determining what will be\nproduced and how the scarce resources of equipment and personnel will be used.  These decisions are mission critical, having a\nsignificant impact on the financial results of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even during routine times, production scheduling can be a\nchallenging task. But with unprecedented supply chain disruptions and huge\nswings in demand, we now face rapid changes to factors that impact the\nresources required to execute production. \nThe speed with which a manufacturer can identify these changes and\neffectively respond to them is key to financial stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take an American football game. Both teams enter the game\nwith detailed game plans, but during the game each team works to find the best\nway to respond to the actions of their opponent. The winner of the contest is often\nnot the team that enters the game with the best game plan, but rather the team\nthat is most successful at adjusting their game plan and responding to unexpected\nactions on the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a similar way, manufacturing plants put together a plan\nthat coordinates all their production resources to maximize utilization while\nfulfilling delivery commitments. But that plan must be constantly adapted to\nchanges in both the external and internal environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The production schedule encompasses two main challenges. The\nfirst is to synchronize all the available resources to obtain the best utilization\nwhile complying with delivery commitments. The second is to maintain high\nflexibility to quickly respond to unforeseen events, such as demand changes,\nmachine breakdown, lack of personnel or delays in raw material deliveries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Synchronization of resources is complex, since it must\nconsider various factors. Dependencies between operations, alternative machines\nand routes, availability of finite resources (such as molds or personnel with\nspecific skill sets), synchronization with maintenance activities, minimizing non-productive\ntime when there is sequence dependent setup or cleanup involved \u2013 all of these\nadd complexity that simply is not possible to optimize without systematic\nsupport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A production scheduling system such as Siemens Opcenter APS<\/a> offers companies an important competitive advantage, differentiating them from companies that do not have similar tools. As manufacturers face new market uncertainty, leveraging a production scheduling and planning system is no longer an option \u2013 it is a requirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our uncertain world today, factories are facing high levels of variability from both the external market demand and availability of labor resources. In view of this uncertainty, Production Scheduling systems are of tremendous importance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28221,"featured_media":1143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[236],"tags":[290,288,287],"industry":[],"product":[422],"coauthors":[2759],"class_list":["post-1142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-learning-resources","tag-advanced-planning-and-scheduling-aps","tag-manufacturing-execution-system-mes","tag-manufacturing-operations-management-mom","product-preactor"],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2020\/04\/production_scheduling_today.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1906,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions\/1906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/opcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}