Siemens Opcenter Advanced Planning and Scheduling

About Siemens Opcenter Advanced Planning and Scheduling (Preactor APS)

Digitalization is changing everything, and manufacturers must be able to react quickly and intelligently to unexpected changes in order to respond to shorter lead times and satisfy customer demands. These challenges are faced not only by large enterprises, but also small and medium-sized organizations. Siemens Opcenter Advanced Planning and Scheduling (formerly known as Preactor APS) is specifically designed to meet the critical need for detail, accuracy and efficiency in the production planning and production scheduling processes of the modern manufacturing business.

Siemens Opcenter Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) products use advanced algorithms that balance demand and capacity to generate achievable production schedules. Opcenter APS can be used for long-term strategic planning covering months and years, medium-term tactical planning for a planning horizon of a few weeks, as well as for detailed sequencing and scheduling. The software can be installed out-of-the-box, but it is flexible and can be customized and configured if necessary. Opcenter APS can be used standalone to manage planning and scheduling, but it is also designed for full integration with other enterprise software systems, including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution System (MES), data collection, forecasting, demand planning and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) monitoring.

Engineering Industries eXcellence has been delivering Siemens software for Production Planning & Scheduling to manufacturers across all industry sectors for over a decade. We believe in the flexibility, reliability and scalability of these products, which is why we continue to work with them in order to help our customers optimize processes and grow their businesses.

Features for Advanced Planning with Siemens Opcenter APS (Preactor APS)

Siemens Opcenter Advanced Planning software is designed to facilitate long-term and mid-term production planning. It considers forecast and long-term orders, supports decision-making about feasibility and affects the general direction of your production strategy. Advanced Planning supports major production capacity decisions related to your workforce, resource capacity and factories. The software enables you to determine what to produce, how much to produce, where to produce it, when to produce it and exactly what materials and resources are required to do so. Features and capabilities include:

Generation and updating of Master Production Schedule (MPS)
Finite and/or infinite capacity planning
Time-based planning (day, week, month or combination)
Bill of Materials (BOM) level planning
Make-To-Order (MTO) planning based on future demand/changes
Make-To-Stock (MTS) planning based on rough cut capacity, pack forward figures, target days of stock cover, manufacturing preferences, minimum/maximum re-order quantities and product shelf life
Interactive schedule visualization (drag and drop, different graphical and calendar formats)
Integration with ERP system to drive material purchase planning
Automatic synchronization with Advanced Scheduling system

Source: Siemens Opcenter Advanced Planning (Preactor APS)

Features for Advanced Scheduling with Siemens Opcenter APS (Preactor APS)

Siemens Opcenter Advanced Scheduling software enables you to generate a feasible production schedule based on the actual capacity and availability of your resources and other constraints. Production orders can be scheduled quickly using intelligent built-in rules, and the planner can manually interact with the schedule to make changes based on their experience or new information. Advanced Scheduling enables you to optimize decision-making related to overtime, order prioritization, production batches, order delivery negotiation and order processing. Features and capabilities include:

Generation of finite production schedule based on availability of resources (labor, materials, tooling) and process constraints
Flexible environment enables users to configure schemas, change constraints and create custom rules
Order sequencing and prioritization
What-if scheduling scenario analysis and comparison
Interactive schedule viewing
Advanced material handling (assembly/material consumption rules, customer-specific material usage rules, quality rules)
Advanced schedule optimization (changeover time minimization, preferred sequencing, campaigning)
Advanced constraint modeling (concurrent rules, inter-operational rules)
Advanced process and material level visualization
Integration with MES to drive and optimize order execution

Source: Siemens Opcenter Advanced Scheduling (Preactor APS)

Benefits of Siemens Opcenter Advanced Planning and Scheduling (Preactor APS)

Reduce work-in-progress (WIP)
Minimize inventory
Increase plant efficiency
Improve accuracy of delivery dates
Reduce non-value-add activities
Improve decision-making
Facilitate change management following unexpected events
Optimize resource utilization
Maximize production throughput

Our Partnership with Siemens Digital Industries

Engineering Industries eXcellence has achieved the Siemens Smart Expert Partner designation, which differentiates us as an industry and customer-validated expert in the Siemens Digital Industries software suite, specifically in their Digital Manufacturing products: Teamcenter Manufacturing, Shop Floor Connect (SFC), Shop Floor Integrate (SFI), Tecnomatix Plant Simulation, Tecnomatix Process Simulate, Opcenter Execution Discrete (SIMATIC IT UADM), Opcenter Execution Process (SIMATIC IT UAPI), Opcenter Advanced Planning and Scheduling (Preactor APS) and Camstar. We are also certified in their Mendix and MindSphere Cloud solutions.

As a certified reseller, solution provider and system integrator for Siemens across several business units and portfolios, Engineering Industries eXcellence is the only Siemens partner in the world that has the combined vision, industry experience and technical expertise to deliver integrated solutions across all these different offerings.