A Day in the Life of a Production Planner

Being a production planner at a manufacturing plant is no easy task. Without a flexible planning and scheduling process in place, as well as the right technology to support it, planners are often unable to react quickly or appropriately to the many unexpected events that can transpire on the modern factory floor. This can lead to costly operational disruptions, lost sales opportunities and the inability to deliver for customers on time. Join Marco, the production planner at Engineering Industries eXcellence’s state-of-the-art bicycle factory, along with his trusted Siemens Opcenter Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software, for an exclusive view into a day in the life of a production planner.

Interested in speaking to one of our experts? Contact us at info@indx.com.

Full Video Transcript

Welcome to Engineering Industries eXcellence's state-of-the-art bicycle factory! We work hard and smart to make the best bikes in the world. That's me, my name is Marco. I'm the production planner at the factory, and I love my job…most of the time. Today is Friday, and it's almost time to head out for the weekend, hurray! Right now, I just want to finish up work and get out of here as soon as possible. I have big weekend plans you see.

Before I can leave, I will need to make sure the production plans and schedules are all set up for Monday morning. Let's check it out.

This is our Opcenter APS tool. On the bottom, we have a Gantt chart, where we model our factory. On the left we have our machines. On the top, from left to right, we have our Time Going, with some information about the material coming in and the material going out. We also have information about all our Operations, and we can simply start by dragging and dropping our operations into the Gantt. The system automatically knows on which machine I can produce this order, so I can drop it. I can go on to the next operation, drop it and so on, and so on and so on. As you can imagine, this becomes a little bit annoying and time-consuming, if you have more operations than I have here, or if you have multiple orders and so on. So, let’s take advantage of the tool. The tool comes with a series of out-of-the-box logic to support your sequences. We have Forward Sequence from the first operation to the last, Backward Sequence from the last operation to the first, and some other more advanced sequence logic. Let’s start with the easier one - the Forward Sequence by Due Date. As you can see, in less than a second, I have my production plan for the next 3 days ready. I don’t have anything unscheduled, so I can close this one. And I can make this bigger, so I can see better. So, here we have our Operation that goes from left to right. We can see and highlight my Order. I can highlight the next Operation instead. I can see what the next operation will be, what all the subsequent operations will be, and I can see how each operation relates to each other. I look, and I have a couple of orders a little bit late, but not to worry. They will be delivered the next day with respect to their due date. I can check their due date, but I know this customer and they’re fine with it, so we can send the schedule to the plant and check the time.

It’s already 5:00 PM, time to go home. Bye-bye for the weekend, I’ll see you next week!

Oh, man, did we have a great time, but as always, the weekend goes by too fast! Before you know it, It’s Monday morning. Ugh, time to get up and go back to work.

It’s Monday morning, it’s 9:00 AM, and we are back at the bicycle factory. In our stall, ready with our coffee to face the day. And before you know it…

“Marco speaking. Hi Zee.” Sorry, guys, this is the plant manager. “What? A metal worker did not show up? Family emergency? Let’s give it a look.” OK. Bye-bye metal worker. Zee, don’t worry, Marco and Siemens Opcenter APS to the rescue!

Let’s go back to the tool and try to see what we can do. We can pull up the plot that identifies how our secondary Constraints are working. So, for example, the metal worker in this case. We usually have two, but I guess we have to change this and put down one. So, I can say that from today at 6:00 AM, start of the shift, until let’s say the 14^th, let’s give him 2 days to recover and hope he gets better, we only have one person. Immediately, the tool knows that we have a problem. We have an alarm. We can change visualization to be able to see which orders are problematic. And we can run a reschedule to see if my secondary constraints are respected and what happened to my orders. At a glance, I can see that the same two orders that were late are still late. Instead of a couple of hours, they are late almost a day. So, I better call the customer and let them know.

But overall, I am satisfied with this, so we can go back to our almost-cold coffee. But before I can approach it…

“Marco speaking. Hi Zee, again. What? No saddles? Truck crash?” I guess say bye-bye to the raw materials. “No worries, Zee, I will make some adjustments. Let me check how we are doing.”

Let’s go back to the system. OK, so we can see that we had a saddle that was supposed to come in, but now it’s not coming in today, it’s probably coming in tomorrow morning. So, let’s change this to reflect that it’s coming tomorrow, let’s say 6:00 AM, just to be sure. So, you see, a new item popped up. I can automatically check if there is a problem, but all operations are fine, so we didn’t really need them today. We’ll be good, not a big deal. I can call back Zee and say no worries, we go on as scheduled.

This Monday is officially not fun, but is any Monday? Now, let’s go back to my cold cof…

Oh, no! “Marco speaking. Hey Zee, what? Machine broken? Maintenance cannot fix it today?” OK, so I guess we say bye to the machine. So, let’s go back to the schedule. Marco and Opcenter APS back to the support!

So, let’s see. Let’s change this and let’s add Breakdown, on the 12th at 1:00 PM until, let’s say, tomorrow morning. We are hopeful that tomorrow morning the machine will be back up. OK, as you can see, we now have a Breakdown in the Gantt. Our Orders on the Line adjust to it, but the next Operation starts before I can finish. So, I should go here, modify this, but now the metal worker is not respecting our constraints. OK, yes, undo. So, let’s have the tool fix the schedule, use the tool to automatically repair the schedule. We can see at a glance that we have a couple of orders, always the same, that are going to be late, so we have to call the customer and tell them: “Guys, we’ll be one day late, please accept our apologies. We are doing whatever we can, but we are having some problems.”

But, we can say we are pretty happy with this overall. At least we know that nothing else can possibly go wrong, right, today?!

“Marco speaking. Hi Chris! How are sales going? What? 4 bikes for a big new customer? Let me check. I’ll let you know as soon as possible if we can deliver those 4 bikes. That could open a new market for us.” So, guess what, Marco and Opcenter APS back to work.

So, this tool has a nice feature that allows us to simulate orders. For example, let’s say “Chris” wanted to put in an order for our road bikes. He said we want 4 bikes and delivery as soon as possible. OK, it looks like this order can be completed by January 15th, so in 3 days, by 10:40 AM. Do you want to confirm this enquiry? “Hey Chris, would this be enough or not? What do you think? OK, talk to the customer and let him know that we will deliver the day after next.”

Oh, this has been an awful Monday, but luckily, it’s almost done. On the bright side, I was able to help our factory overcome several unexpected challenges, and I helped our business gain a new customer. I did a great job, but I couldn’t have done it without Siemens Opcenter Advanced Planning and Scheduling by my side.

All right, time to pack up for the day. I can’t wait to sit on my couch and relax. What? No! My bike is about to get shipped off at the dock. I guess I left it too close to the end of the production line. Gotta run. I’ll see you next time. Come back again soon!