MPS+PLUS is a powerful, flexible, yet easy to use tool for developing and maintaining a master production schedule that meets your customer service level requirements within the constraints of your operations. MPS+PLUS has proven to be effective in all types of manufacturing environments, from food products to furniture and from film to pharmaceuticals. MPS+PLUS was designed to follow the paradigm for master scheduling as espoused by APICS.
MPS+PLUS gives your master scheduler the power to determine the on-line real-time answers to virtually any "what if?" planning scenario. MPS+PLUS allows you to do simulations with up to 36 supply plans and 36 demand plans for each part. In addition, the master scheduler can simulate the effects of different planning parameters such as lot sizes and target inventory levels.
MPS+PLUS supports the basic types of production environments:
Using planning bills of material, MPS+PLUS converts the company's production plan for product families into discrete units of production for the individual items in the master schedule. The bill of material relationship defines the percentage distribution of the component items in the bill. The percent distribution can vary over time through the use of effectivity dates. This significantly reduces the amount of work required to master schedule a number of items.
MPS+PLUS provides a powerful, easy to use, "rough cut" capacity planning capability. MPS+PLUS uses summary-level resource capacity definitions and resource routings which define the resources required for each item. The resource capacity and per-unit resource load profile information is extended by the master production schedule to determine the load-to-capacity picture throughout the planning horizon. Thus, in long-range production planning, MPS+PLUS provides your master scheduler with an early warning when resource capacities are either underutilized or over-committed.
In order to effectively manage and control the master production schedule under constantly changing conditions, the master scheduler must be able to quickly pinpoint problem areas. MPS+PLUS helps you keep the schedule aligned by automatically providing notification whenever the master production schedule contains discrepancies or requires some action.
For many companies, sales forecasts may sometimes reflect seasonal trends in customer demands for products which exceed production capacity limitations. To maintain a competitive level of customer service, sales and operations plans may require a buildup of inventory during slack periods of demand in order to support the additional product shipments required during the peak sales seasons. For these types of situations, MPS+PLUS enables you to specify up to six target inventory levels by item number.
In order to master schedule multiple facilities or production lines, there is a need to review the consumption of resources, material availability and available-to-promise balances from both an enterprise and an individual facility perspective. Multi-plant planning bills of material distribute production of an end item to different facilities. On-line displays show projected available balances and available-to-promise at both the aggregate and individual levels. Similarly, multi-plant load profiles show load vs capacity at both the location and at aggregated company levels. Resource definitions include the traditional measures of labor and machines, as well as financial measures, such as profit contribution and/or revenue.
MPS+PLUS utilizes user-defined resource master capacity and resource routing requirements to perform a complete time-phased requirements-to-capacity analysis for each resource. Resource master definitions can be used to identify:
MPS+PLUS displays the summary capacity and load picture and highlights the overload and underload conditions anticipated by the master schedule.
MPS+PLUS supports your sales and operations planning objectives by helping you make the right strategic production planning decisions. MPS+PLUS links the master production schedule to your sales and distribution plans, identifies master schedule exception conditions, and maintains current available-topromise information.
MPS+PLUS is powerful simulation tool that enables your schedulers to develop optimal production schedules. MPS+PLUS+PLUS is also easy to use as the logic follows the standard APICS model. In addition, MPS+PLUS monitors the performance against the schedules and provides visibility for promising customer orders.