Aspen Plant Scheduler™ Family
Generate optimal production schedules to maximize profitability and meet service levels
Aspen Plant Scheduler Family is a three-tiered scheduling solution designed to address the varying degrees of scheduling complexity. Each solution boasts an easy-to-use interface with streamlined workflows to help quickly identify scheduling problems and respond faster to unexpected events. Customers deploying these solutions realize significant benefits in the areas of increased throughput, reduced inventory and expediting costs, and improved customer service. Aspen Plant Scheduler is a core element of AspenTech’s aspenONE® Supply Chain applications.
Features
- Aspen Plant Scheduler: Provides basic finite capacity production scheduling with rapid implementation. Schedulers are able to effectively simulate production capacity and evaluate production scenarios for meeting total demand. Additionally, the ability to link multi-stage production activities and customer orders provides real-time visibility of demand and manufacturing levels.
- Aspen Plant Scheduler - Enhanced Automation (EA): Economically optimizes the production schedule. Generates detailed plant production plans using advanced heuristics and solvers, creating an optimal short-term schedule of operations while minimizing changeover, production, and inventory costs. Determines the precise timing and sequence of production activities throughout the plant. It works in finite capacity, so the production plans generated are feasible from both a capacity and material flow perspective and are consistent with the strategic production plan.
- Aspen Plant Scheduler - Enhanced Optimization (EO): Facilitates the adoption of dynamic supply chain management practices through an understanding of a plant’s supply and demand balance capabilities. Utilizes this unique perspective to create the optimal short-term plan and schedule of operations in the midst of numerous bottlenecks and constraints. Using both Mixed Integer/Linear Programming (MILP) optimization and advanced heuristics and solvers, this allows for the consideration and tradeoffs needed to deliver an economically optimal plan within the physical constraints of a particular production facility.
Planning Board: Enables schedulers to visualize the schedule at a glance as well as drill down into the details of each production activity. Problems in the schedule are easily identified via a color coded grid and active user assistance provides guidance for schedule changes based on raw material availability, equipment constraints, and batch dependency.- Intuitive User Interface: An easy-to-use interface leverages a Microsoft® look and feel for a rich and engaging user experience with personalized layouts. A ribbon provides easy navigation, enabling users to quickly discover and access advanced functions.
- Enterprise-Class Integration: Supports enterprise-wide connectivity and management of data and models. Integrates with ERP and in-house systems to maintain synchronized data between the transaction and scheduling systems, as well as other AspenTech supply chain and manufacturing execution applications, simplifying deployment and reducing total cost of ownership. Inter-application integration is supported by a common data model. Supports robust data exchange with ERP and other data systems through Aspen Supply Chain Connect.
- Reporting: Powerful and flexible reporting and visualization capabilities enable schedulers to quickly hone in on the information they need. Favorite layouts and screen configurations can be saved and retrieved, personalizing the application to a user’s specific business needs.
Benefits
- Improve Supply Chain Metrics: Customers are able to improve on-time delivery performance by up to 5%, increase throughout by 1-5%, decrease manufacturing cycle times, and reduce expediting costs.
- Accelerate Benefits: The rapid implementation of Aspen Plant Scheduler provides quick user acceptance and time to benefit. Each solution builds upon the previous, so as the business complexity changes or as people move throughout the organization, the flexibility of the solution supports a right-fit for the current situation.
- Enable Multi-Level Scheduling: The three-tier solution provides an advanced scheduling starting point for many production processes. It includes a base level scheduling solution that provides visibility, reporting, and simulation capabilities. Additional capabilities add value by economically optimizing the schedule and providing scheduling optimization capable of addressing high process and scheduling complexity.
- Meet New Demands with Tight Integration: Ensures synchronization between business processes, providing the agility to respond to changing market conditions.
- Improve Employee Efficiency: Easy-to-use interface with Microsoft look and feel simplifies the learning curve for the novice user and reduces the time required to create plant schedules.