Detailed Planning – Hard to Impossible Without a Production Control Center

The term detailed planning makes it clear that production planning is refined in its entirety, i.e., the individual subareas are significantly more differentiated than the first rough-cut planning and are therefore designed as efficiently as possible. This cannot be done without, or, to put it in favorable terms, best with a production control station for production control. A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is just as indispensable at this stage of production planning. The MES is directly linked to the process automation systems; this enables the four areas of management, steering, control, and monitoring to be carried out in real-time.

The production control station supplements the preceding production planning and control system PPS as a computer program with production control. Detailed planning is used, for example, to determine which machine is assigned to which jobs. This is done with sequence planning. But only the ultimate control via the production control station enables the actual implementation of detailed planning down to the last detail. The control station, in general, as part of a control system, is the technical equipment or, in other words, the control system that supports process control. This may sound unwieldy at first glance, but when production output, detailed planning, and MES are considered together, it is conclusive.

Each of these resources is subject to constant or temporary fluctuations for very different to individual and often not influenceable reasons. Thus, detailed planning can be complicated. The production control station must be able to react to each of these fluctuations as quickly as possible and according to requirements. The decisive prerequisite for this is the flow of information in real-time. Ideally, this information, or in other words, data, comes from a connected production planning system such as MES. A digital network between MES and production control center is the best prerequisite for fast, clean, and secure data transfer.

For example, the production control station should be freely scalable to all sides. With a view to detailed planning, the planner can recognize at any time and freely decide what he wants to see, evaluate, and influence. For example, all orders for a certain period, divided into a month, week, working day and hour, or the time allocation of a machine with a predefined order.

Control station still indispensable for the production environment

Even at the beginning of the digital 2020s, this tool is still often only used for manual planning. The planner lets his input flow directly into the production control and uses the control station for the subsequent evaluation of all data. If necessary, semi-automatic planning functions such as the early scheduling of orders, taking into account all deadlines, are used.

More and more planners are using the control station as a fully automatic tool for the final detailed planning. Here the planner is exclusively or better said only a supervisor. Intelligent machines take over more and more tasks. For humans in their function as planners, this means a shift of their activities from actual execution to monitoring and control. As a result, and here the circle closes, the human being as a planner has more time for the essential; because his task is to organize a production process that is as optimal as possible and as smooth as possible. For this purpose, the control center for production is and remains the most crucial control center for final detailed planning.

Conclusion

• all resources are optimally used with the detailed planning
• the production is used to the best possible capacity
• the planning effort can be reduced by 70 and more percent
• all orders are kept in view in real-time
• time and organizational bottlenecks are immediately recognizable
• can react quickly to new customer requirements and deadlines
• an increasingly flexible value and supply chain is guaranteed
• the even more precise adherence to deadlines with the associated customer satisfaction is virtually guaranteed in the long term