Planning has become a critical success factor in the textile and apparel business

Shorter delivery times, on-time delivery, smaller lot sizes and on-line order acceptance, are only some of today’s market expectations. These needs must be balanced with the desire to minimize stock financing and maximize profit margins.

Planning Methods and Types

• Production for customer orders at all or a partial levels (Make to Order – MTO)
• Make to stock based on forecast (Make to Stock – MTS)
• Certain products make to stock and others to order
• Beginning to stock and completing/finishing to order
• Purchasing of all or part of raw materials based on forecast
• Job lots allocation to specific customers a order acceptance or before shipping

Forecasting

• Forecast calculation using “arima” (season based) algorithm
• Trend management
• Forecast by customer, agent, market, season / collection, period...
• Forecast per full or partial product code, product family
• Different levels of forecast (style and style color)
• Projections
• Combination of forecasts, projections and customer orders 

 

Available to Promise

• On line or batch (implementing order priority rules) ATP capability
• Immediate updating of all related entities so that planning and (ATP) dates are maintained
• Scheduling of customer orders on specific resources

Master Planning - Textile Requirements Planning (TRP)

• Planning support for both single or multiple company, site, facilities, divisions • Multi-level explosion of material and capacity (from finished product to raw material)
• Capability to create a rules–based demand plan based on a combination of: firm customer orders, sales forecasts, projections, previously reserved work center capacity, and minimum inventory levels- based on fully or partially defined product structure
• Rules-based configuration to include: netting, full / partial BOM, material rules (same / different lots, alternatives allowed, grouping...), purchased or produced, grouping / splitting, optimal lot sizes, different UM’s, multiple yarn count systems...
• All time-phased activities (lead-times, setup / changeover times, queue times...) considered
• Analysis of the impact of the demand plan against factors such as sales revenues, profits and inventory
• Recommended replenishment orders (both externally purchased and internally produced), based on the explosion of the demand plan (purchasing and production plans)
• Immediate identification of material shortages and “at risk” customer orders (which allows planners to be proactive in expediting of production or providing customers with alternative ship dates)
• Work center scheduling around ‘bottleneck’ processes
• Constant monitoring of revisions to the schedule with appropriate notifications
• User defined bucketing formats allowed in days, weeks and months

Work Centers Level Scheduling (Capacity Balance)

• Automatic scheduling and balancing of demands
• Configurable to consider either infinite or finite capacity using a graphical tool to visualize or modify the calculated results
• Visible distinction with reserved capacity by type of order (forecast, projection, confirmed, non-confirmed)
• Bottleneck detection in case of infinite capacity scheduling

Machine Scheduling

• Scheduling system provides an on-line graphical review and update
• Scheduling of all types of departments and operations
• Algorithms to maximize on-time delivery, minimize setup / change-over times while minimizing Work In Process (WIP) inventory
• Immediate highlight of production steps that will be delayed
• Optimize resource selection
• Support for “what if” / simulation scenarios
• Finite scheduling calculations consider also additional resource requirements such as labor or tooling as well as material / component availability
• Possibility for time-based machine split into sub-resources (yarn production frames)
• Management of compatibility rules of products to machines, product to product for sequencing (one after the other),or for grouping (produced together at the same time) and for capacity reservation and product (reserve capacity for a certain customer or production type such as sampling)

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