Planning & Scheduling for Packaging

Solution
Manufacturing

Industry
Product Packaging

Location
North America

Leading provider of recyclable plastic packaging, making PVC films, disposable products (e.g. plastic Cutlery and Straws), aluminum products, PVC and polycarbonate construction products.

Essential competence relies on committing to short service time at a competitive low cost. The industry production process is characterized by:

1. A mix of “make-to-stock” and “make-to-order” products
2. Tight warehouse capacity due to low-value/high-volume products.

Production planning and scheduling is therefore critical to maintain its competitive advantage and increase market share.

Before DecisionBrain, the planners performed production planning manually. However, they encountered difficulty to account for all complexities:

• Coordination across multiple plants
• Production of intermediate and final products
• Heterogeneous maturities and shelf lives
• Tight warehouse capacity

DecisionBrain was tasked with implementing an integrated supply chain planning and production scheduling solution specifically designed for their needs.

DecisionBrain developed a fully integrated planning and scheduling solution that considered all work centers at the same time to define the optimal solution, while respecting manufacturing capabilities and constraints. The solution consists of two major components: a production master planning engine and a scheduling engine.

Production Master Planning: This engine has visibility over all plants and includes all critical requirements. It embeds different complexities such as:

• Machines, tools, raw materials and warehouse specs
• Material shelf life and maturity
• Cross plants redistribution with transportation costs

The outcome is a production Master Plan that leads to reduced production costs and lost sales, thus maximizing profits. Moreover, it offers the flexibility to swiftly adjust for new customers demands. Thanks to its KPIs and reports, planners have a comprehensive view of all plants over the next few months.

Scheduling Engine: This engine not only defines an efficient work center scheduling that maximizes demand satisfaction, but also ensures consistency with the long term view of the Master Plan, providing several benefits:

• Target inventory levels, as defined by the Master Plan
• Intermediate and final production synchronization
• Adherence to all capacity constraints
• Low material waste
• Possibility to easily react to unexpected events, for example, machine breakdowns

The project is in its final phase of implementation and has provided strong preliminary results.