In our last article, we discussed about the much needed built-in Quality module which takes care of the quality aspect of things involved during the entire lifecycle of items, thereby ensuring quality standards being maintained at all the critical stages during the items’ journey within an organisation. In this article, we will talk about the third challenge faced by the manufacturers in the (corrugated boxes) industry, i.e., low capacity utilisation.

The challenge

Low capacity utilisation – Our experience with corrugated box manufacturers has provided us with the insight that the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) is often low for the units. The reason attributed to this phenomenon is the frequent changes of the paper reels and the corrugation rolls. Each instance of the change not only makes the machine sit idle but also results in make-ready wastages. The changes are due to many reasons. Customers make a change in their delivery schedule. There are urgent customer requirements to be met. All that you need to make the finished product is not ready and this fact is known too late and hence there has to be change.

The units are puzzled on how to increase the OEE and thereby produce more from their plants, everything else remaining same.

The solution offered by our solution

Production Scheduling engine – As you are aware, we had discussed in our first article of the series about how Samadhan has learnt from its customers on how to address this issue being faced by them.

In this article, we are going to discuss about a very basic and critical part of any solution (ideally) which should take care of the production scheduling aspect which ultimately ensures that the promised delivery dates given to the customers during the sales order creation are met every single time and that there is no unnecessary chaos on the shop floor. We understand this situation and hence created something in this line, we like to call that as ‘Production Scheduling engine’ that we have created, developed, and built specifically for the corrugation industry. This feature counters the above-mentioned challenge and provides great solution to the box manufacturers in the industry.

The following section explains this feature and how it tackles the challenges and gives the results to the manufacturers that they need.

The module takes care of the production scheduling at 2 stages, namely corrugation schedule and converting schedule. It helps you identify items and quantities to produce in a schedule. It also helps you to ensure that you have enough raw materials to manufacture the required finished goods in any particular shift on a given machine for a given date. The scheduling operation starts by viewing all pending order to start with and the expected delivery date to the customer, the two most important aspects for scheduling. The scheduler now looks for opportunities to couple and sequence jobs which require same flute and paper board (liners and flutes) combination. The scheduler is also assisted by information on available capacities, availability of material in the required denomination and status of dies and plates.

The Production Scheduling engine has the following features which ensure that the promised delivery dates are met every single time and that the customers are the ultimate beneficiaries, not to forget the manufacturers who also benefit greatly from this:

1. Corrugation schedule – It starts with choosing a date on which you want to schedule the corrugation operation on the corrugator (machine) in a given shift. The feature provides you with an option of selecting operator(s) for this particular operation in this particular shift on the particular machine. An enhanced feature in this module allows you to define a sorting sequence, viz. deckle size-wise, flute type-wise, board quality-wise, trim size-wise, delivery date-wise and so on which you would want to consider while you’re queuing the sales orders for their execution. The sorting sequence gives you the freedom to decide the priority based on your chosen criteria and accordingly the sales orders are queued accordingly for their execution. Here, we have created a control where the user is not able to publish the schedule until the system understands that there are enough raw materials that would be required to manufacture the queued sales orders. Another added visibility is the color coding that we have introduced where a red colored font would suggest that there isn’t enough raw material and that it needs to be procured first, a green color on the other hand would indicate their enough availability. Until the system gives a green color, the user would not be able to publish and until it gets published, it does not move to the operator and hence there is no production. This control ensures that the jobs are not unnecessarily queued up and that the situation does not become chaotic. This guarantees that the pre-requisites of a smooth production process are taken care of before actual production happens and hence the organisation does not end up with machine downtime leading to resource wastages. Thus, this feature helps the planner understand if the jobs are possible by the available stock or reel (paper position-wise).
2. Published corrugation schedule – We have built such intelligence in the system that only when the planner is sure (with the system’s aid) that the sales orders in the schedule (according to the defined/decided sorting order) can be executed with the available raw materials, they can publish the schedule and the system would allow for the same and that it ensures smooth operation on the shop floor with no confusion. It optimises the machine and resource utilisation and reduces the wastages associated with machine downtimes and/or man-hour losses. From here, the job cards are generated and the operators have to simply execute them.
3. Published converting schedule – The second stage corresponds to the auto creation (optional) of the published converting schedule. This happens because the whole routing (defined) for the given finished good contained the converting aspect of the whole process from the very beginning and in order to minimise/eliminate the manual intervention/manipulation, it is recommended to keep it that way. Although, the feature could be made optional as per the requirement and need of the organisation. i.e., the corrugation scheduling and the converting scheduling could be done one after the other in the correct order and necessary controls could be exercised to ensure smooth flow of operations and WIP from one stage to the other. For this stage as well, the job cards are generated and the operators have to simply execute them.
4. Stock reservation – Another allied feature to this engine is the facility to reserve the stock for a given sales order during the corrugation scheduling. It helps the planner to ensure that the stock is available when the production is going on and that ensures no machine downtime or man-hour losses. Moreover, such reservations would ensure that the reserved items would not be visible during other scheduling. It eliminates any potential coincidence/conflict. This feature will help us in meeting urgent customer requirements by reserving the stock against such orders and removing any possibility of eating up of such resources by another order which will adversely affect such important deliveries.

Overall, if we see, through this feature/engine we have tried to automate the system as much as possible and bring order to the way the scheduling is done, made it intelligent and incorporated logic/algorithm where the system uses all the relevant data with regard to the availability of machines, raw material, and other resources from within and provides us with an unbiased picture of the correct status. It has made the system more objective and error-free with less manual intervention resulting in an optimised use of available resources and reduction in the level of wastages.

Production Scheduling engine – The advantages summed up

• An intuitive and intelligent interface to manage the production scheduling from one single screen.
• An optimized schedule with minimal paper reel and flute rolls change is the result of the scheduling operations.
• Our customers have registered 5% to 10% growth in production by usage of the engine, everything else remaining the same.
• The time saved in creating the schedule and managing them is yet another gain.
• Missed and delayed deliveries (measured in our system as OTIF – on time and in full) reduced, registering higher customer satisfaction.

Watch out for our next articles to learn in detail about other facet of the solution

Hope you had a good read about another key challenge faced by the corrugation industry-low capacity utilisation, and the solution provided by Samadhan with its Production Scheduling engine.

In this series, we will be coming up with the next article, based around another key challenge-tracking difficulty in handling the main raw material, paper, and how Samadhan can help tackle it with another great feature created and developed by it.

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You may learn more about us on Microsoft AppSource Partners – Samadhan and about our industry-specific Microsoft certified solutions on Business Central and F&O on Industry-specific Business Apps from Samadhan – Microsoft AppSource.