Production Planning & Scheduling for Manufacturers 

Why

There is always a good reason for adjusting the plan

Effective planning and scheduling are crucial for manufacturing companies to maximize productivity. Without a well-designed plan and schedule, manufacturers may encounter a range of issues, such as missed delivery deadlines, underutilized assets & resources, excess inventory, and reduced profitability.

By planning production in advance and scheduling tasks based on capacity and availability, manufacturers can avoid overloading machines or employees, minimize downtime, and ensure that all resources are utilized effectively. This helps to reduce costs and increase overall efficiency.

Drafting a well-designed pan is not a simple task however. Planners should not only deal with hard production constraints and requirements, but also have to deal with a myriad of information coming from different stakeholders while serving often conflicting objectives.

Moreover, planners should respond quickly to changes in customer orders, unexpected disruptions, and supply chain issues, making it a very tough environment to work in.

What

Making the complex simple 

The Grain combines state-of-the-art data analytics & optimization techniques with years of experience in supply chain processes. We realise that every production environment is confronted with its own specific issues. Our team of process & optimization experts is able to understand those specifics and build a model to deal with it and embed it in the Checkmate application. We also realise that planners are no mathematicians or programmers, and are under constant pressure to adjust plans. That is exactly the reason why we want to hide away all that complexity and provide planners with an easy to use and intuitive application.

AI and the planner hand in hand

The capacity of computers to solve planning problems far exceeds that of the human brain. However, ensuring that algorithms get the right inputs is not possible without the help of experienced production planners. Capturing all planning expertise in a knowledge system is essential for building a loop between human planners and AI systems. The more an AI system can learn from planners, the better and more comprehensive its recommendations become to support the planners in their role

Technology alone does not provide the ultimate solution. Expert knowledge in combination with technology is still the key to success. That's where Checkmate makes the difference.