By carefully considering all the functional challenges -- with a focus on integration touch points -- your company's APS implementation project can provide a variety of benefits to many departments
Last month, we looked at integrating advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems with business application software that drives today's companies. Focusing on the business application portfolio, the column examined the challenge of identifying integration touch points and made recommendations that will make almost any APS system implementation run smoother.
ABCs of APS
There are also a number of functional challenges of APS integration, which can be summarized partly as follows:
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Bill of Materials (BOM) and Routings -- Even though planning is done within an APS, transactional systems may also need the BOM and routing data to make proper component and resource allocations, or to keep track of shop floor-related activities. Most APS systems allow BOMs and routings to be maintained together, whereas some transactional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems may store them separately.
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Moreover, a manufactured item may have quantity-dependent routings and a number of alternative routings. Some applications can also only handle one routing per item. Therefore, when you consider the impact of BOM and routings, it's important to ensure that interfaces can properly handle functional discrepancies between applications.
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Order Types -- Planning algorithms within most APS systems work with two order types: "supply orders" that increase inventory levels and "demand orders" that decrease inventory levels. However, most transactional systems offer multiple order types that may qualify either as supply and/or demand (sales orders, quotations, contracts, purchase orders, service orders, warehouse orders, replenishment orders, etc.). To capture the whole picture, interfaces must map order types between different applications correctly.
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Order Numbering -- APS systems need timely production order and operation completion information from the shop floor. This requires two-way communication between the APS and manufacturing execution systems, which enables the access of right order information from different applications, using unique order numbers. Since those numbers are generally system generated, they may not be the same in different applications, even though they represent the same production orders. Consequently, interfaces may need an order cross-referencing mechanism to map orders in different systems and avoid duplication.
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Unit of Measure -- Transactional systems generally record orders in a unit of measure that differs from the planning unit of measure. For instance, a sales order may be recorded in boxes of 10. Whereas, planning of the same item may take place by using another measurement unit. Interfaces must take into account unit of measure conversions.
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Sales & Purchase Contract Schedules -- In terms of aggregate quantities, sales contracts in contract management applications may be generically defined to cover a period of time. For example, the contract might require "X amount of a certain item to be delivered every Monday during the next year." Before they're passed to the APS system as demand, such contract statements must be converted into discrete demand quantities to represent the sales contract schedule requirements on specific days. The same rule also applies to purchase contracts.
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Calendars -- In most APS systems, calendars must be maintained separately for each resource. Some transactional systems use one global calendar for the whole company or specific work centres, or they may use a simple five-day weekly calendar. Although the maintenance of calendars in most applications is a straightforward process and generally performed manually, different applications may need to be synchronized for consistency. For instance, available-to-promise (ATP) dates during sales order entry may be calculated by an APS. As a result, it would be important that the calendar used by the sales module is consistent with the planning calendar(s) used by the APS system.
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Regenerative vs. Net Change Data Collection -- The ability to support incremental data extracts for net change planning is an important factor for all APS integration projects. This may require some vital transactions to be date and time stamped within transactional systems. If your transactional systems don't support this, changes may be required.
By carefully considering all the functional challenges -- with a focus on integration touch points --your company's APS implementation project can provide a variety of benefits to many departments.
Copyright © 2001 Materials Management & Distribution - Article is re-printed here with the permission of Materials Management & Distribution.
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