INDUSTRY
Optimize production planning in the automotive industry
16/01/2023
Reading time: 5 min
Making the production process as efficient as possible, balancing the means employed against the needs, is a challenge that determines the proper functioning of the factory and the profitability of any industrial site. The most accurate production planning possible must therefore be implemented.
The industrial planning manager has a crucial mission: to estimate the medium-term workload, allocate the human resources and machines needed to achieve the objective pursued, and be able to adapt to changes through relevant simulations.
The automotive industry, in particular, operates in a very specific context that requires flawless responsiveness.
The specifics of industrial planning for the automotive industry
To understand the challenges of the automotive sector, it is essential to understand that vehicle manufacturers and spare parts makers are subject to constant changes in the orders placed with them and face significant demand volatility.
At the same time, the market, and consequently the clients, require industries to be capable of delivering a potentially large number of parts or vehicles at any moment, and also to be able to adapt production to any changes in the nature or characteristics of the product, almost instantaneously.
The architecture of industrial production thus becomes more complex than ever, with visibility reduced to a few months or even a few weeks, depending on the production rank.
The management of finished and semi-finished products often turns out to be very time-consuming and complex, particularly as the sector frequently faces numerous stockouts. The coordinator in charge of planning must therefore have advanced tools to effectively and swiftly forecast the progress of production stages, which itself is relatively simple as it often involves single-product lines.
The steps of production planning
There are two of them and they are essential to every profession involved in the industrial process: stamping, machining, rolling, quality control, etc. The industrial planner will thus ensure:
The adequacy of load - capacity of the industrial unit
Initially, it will be necessary to determine if the resources are sufficient to reach the target level of stock coverage in the medium term.
The production need may be related to:
A order or pre-order;
A manufacturing order issued automatically by the ERP;
Determining if the industrial unit will be able to reach the desired stock level over a specific period involves comparing the resource needs to the means available at a given time. The load is then defined by the volume of work to be done, multiplied by the time required to accomplish it. The capacity, on the other hand, is represented by the available working time.
The estimation of load - capacity adequacy allows one to ensure the feasibility of the desired production plan and, if necessary, to alert on the need for additional resources.
The automotive industry is particularly concerned with managing the production pace and the level of in-process products. Thus, the organization of teams over several weeks will be crucial. However, this process, when the company chooses to prioritize the Excel tool over software, relies on a single key resource that must juggle and update sometimes up to 80 files per week. Human intervention in this management involves a risk of error that can increase, especially due to the numerous back and forth between stock constraints and machine capacity constraints. Indeed, the more significant the constraints, the greater the margin of error.
Making scheduling effective
Scheduling is equivalent to managing daily production priorities, by planning all the tasks to be performed with a high level of complexity. The industrial planning department must necessarily have total visibility over all available resources, the level of supported load, and the production objectives to be achieved.
The scheduler's role will be to find the arrangement allowing for the sequential execution of manufacturing orders, in such a way that the entire production is completed within the allotted time. This entails not only loading the various means with the correct production order, but also acting as a conductor for the smoothness of the entire production.
Adaptation is the rule for the two planning horizons: the achievement of objectives must be continuously followed, in order to adapt future plans based on the adherence rate to production objectives. However, as with the planning exercise, using Excel files makes tracking the scheduler's objectives from one week to the next quite complex.
The Oplit solution simplifies industrial planning.
As a SaaS solution accessible from each of the workstations involved in planning, Oplit aims to forecast and organize production in order to optimize the service rate. In particular, it ensures the unfailing success of industrial planning missions: determining the feasibility of the objectives that guarantee the timely delivery of the required production, and optimizing the allocation of human and mechanical resources.
Even in periods of reasonable load, Oplit makes it possible to produce as effectively and quickly as possible, meeting production needs. The resources thus freed can then be reallocated, or other orders can be fulfilled: the gain in competitiveness is immediate.
The reduction of the production backlog and the better allocation of personnel will naturally lead to a decrease in production disruptions. The medium-term vision offered by the simulations will leave room for adjusting human resources.
Regarding the method, Oplit intervenes very concretely on the two phases of planning mentioned above:
On the load-capacity report: the simulations performed allow for adapting production objectives and the allocation of human resources based on the demand for the coming months. The availability of teams, including foreseeable absences and training, is taken into account.
On scheduling: the production schedule is defined based on the "bottleneck" positions that determine the maximum production rate. By visualizing the production backlog in the workshop through each link, over-supplied or under-supplied positions are quickly identified.
At any time, it is possible to modify the simulation assumptions to integrate new data: new order, modification of human resources, machine breakdown, etc. The production process is then modified for all participants and the new priorities are clearly displayed on their screens. The updated orders make production smooth despite changes and this, without wasting time.
The automotive industry is undoubtedly among the most complex production systems to organize on a daily basis, just behind, perhaps, the planning of the aerospace industry. Being subject to constant uncertainties, it cannot settle for an approximate planning: the use of an efficient industrial planning software is essential.
The intervention of Oplit then provides unprecedented responsiveness and, by extension, leads to a significant increase in the competitiveness of a unit gaining in service rate.
