Truly lean operations enable Demand Driven Manufacturing to become a reality. Truly lean operations enable real time decision making by factory personnel on the floor. Truly lean operations require decision support and execution tools that support and sustain this process model across the factory and throughout the enterprise.
The Factory Logic Lean Operations suite enhances and extends your QAD investment and enables truly lean operating processes to extend to the factory floor where Demand Driven Manufacturing becomes a reality.
A special message to QAD MFG/PRO customers:
Factory Logic has deployed its level scheduling and kanban management solutions in environments with established QAD infrastructures. The success of these projects can be attributed to two factors: the strength and stability of QAD and the advanced implementations of lean principles available only from Factory Logic.
Through case studies, we can show you how to use MFG/PRO to your advantage in accelerating your lean initiatives and in sustaining the lean philosophy as a full-scale enterprise practice. A seamless integration strategy and support for the variety of operational environments found in the real world ensure that the lean initiative will be productive enterprise-wide.
In deploying the respected Factory Logic Pacemaker Scheduler, Production Synchronizer and Supply Synchronizer modules alongside the established manufacturing management components of QAD, your enterprise can:
- Implement real-time level scheduling to make pacemaker processes more agile, more resilient to disruption and more efficient in their use of inventory, labor and time.
- Sustain the thousands of kanban loops within the enterprise with minimal user intervention through automatic monitoring of changes to the recommended loop sizes, target and alert levels. This data can be sent to QAD Manufacturing Control or any external kanban tracking system already in place.
- Determine ideal kanban inventory levels, trigger points and alert levels by combining operational metrics gathered by QAD with Factory Logic's modeling of capacity for complex multiple-tool manufacturing processes.
- Rely on QAD Manufacturing Control to provide suppliers with Factory Logic leveled pull signals, absent the bull-whip effect. Predictable pull signals, unlike forecasts, reduce the Supplier's costs and contribute directly to their performance improvements.
- Model the capacity of complex multiple-tool manufacturing processes for the most accurate kanban size recommendations available from any vendor. Factory Logic publishes its kanban recommendations to the QAD kanban tracking module. Third-party MES and shop-floor solutions can also use the same information.
Setting the Pace through Level Scheduling
The Level Scheduling(or Heijunka) principle states that a production schedule for pacemaker operations using a stable takt time with as small lots as possible will smooth material flow throughout the factory.
A smooth material flow then enables synchronization across the entire supply chain, as production and consumption rates rise and fall in unison to meet changing demand.
From a data integration point of view, the Factory Logic Pacemaker Planning module is a plug-in replacement for the QAD Master Production Schedule.
However, from an operations point of view, the Factory Logic Pacemaker Scheduler contains the most advanced scheduling algorithms available for manufacturing operations that require leveled scheduling on a large scale:
- A production model for processes with variable run-rates, variable staffing levels, production splitting, sequence-based production and changeover constraints.
- Support for a mix of leveled production items and build-to-order items in the same schedule.
- In collaboration with a real-time production tracking system, Factory Logic detects disruptive events - shifts in customer demand or execution problems, assesses their impact on the manufacturing operations and responds rapidly in order to keep the supply-chain in line with customer demand. Decisions are made in minutes vs. hours.
Supply-chain Synchronization: Forecasts from QAD, Leveling from Factory Logic, Execution from QAD
In its role as the supply-chain synchronization layer between QAD's ERP and Manufacturing Control, Factory Logic provides real-time replenishment decisions (what to produce and what to pull from suppliers) to all constituents. QAD receives these real-time control signals from Factory Logic and manages the extended supply chain accordingly.
There are of course many ways to deploy Factory Logic in an ERP environment; only a few aspects are touched on here. Contact us for case studies and to discuss how we can tailor a deployment plan for your lean initiatives.
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