Infor SyteLine/CSI ERP Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS)

From reducing inventory to manufacturing costs without jeopardizing customer service, manufacturers need to do more with less than ever before. As a result, planning must focus on customer demand, pulling to the customer due date, and synchronizing the flow of material and capacity accordingly.

Also known as Cloud Suite Industrial (CSI), SyteLine APS is a powerful solution that synchronizes the use of work centers, inventory, resources, and supply with customer orders, which allows you to:

Scheduling

APS provides a manufacturing schedule based on events or operations instead of complete jobs, and uses the same tables and data as the planning engine. This allows you to:

• Take better advantage of openings in resource schedules
• Provide a more realistic dispatch list for the shop floor
• Synchronize the production schedule to the plan
• Have the option to use master scheduling to handle production runs where order-by-order production would not be optimal

SyteLine APS generates real-time projections of when you can complete orders by comparing all demands, including customer orders, against a long-term plan. SyteLine displays the current status of inventory levels, forecasts, job schedules, PO due dates, customer orders, etc. and creates planned orders accordingly to satisfy the demands. You then “firm” the planned orders into purchase orders, purchase requisitions, job orders, production schedules, or transfer orders.

The long-term plan includes information such as:

Infinite APS vs. APS

You can run APS in APS Mode or Infinite APS Mode. The difference between them is in the resource capacity that SyteLine considers when generating a plan. Infinite APS assumes infinite resource capacity, while APS constrains the plan realistically based on availability of resources.

APS mode considers whether the crew and machines are on-shift and not busy working on another demand. In APS, resources are capable of working on a limited number of tasks while on shift.

Infinite APS mode uses the sum of the Move, Queue, Setup, Run, and Finish times defined for the operations and assumes the resources are capable of working on an unlimited number of tasks while on shift.

MRP vs. APS

Material requirements planning (MRP) plans requirements for items according to the level the item appears in a bill of material (BOM), batching together requirements needed at the same period of time. Like APS, MRP generates planned orders, which you firm into actual SyteLine transactions.

MRP and APS use the same basic input data but APS plans all requirements for one demand through the end item’s entire BOM, then plans all requirements for the next demand, and so forth for all the demands, based on order priority and each demand’s due date.

Examples of APS differences from MRP include:

• APS “pull-plans” each demand backward in time, starting from the due date, to determine the start dates for the planned orders. If any single component from the demand cannot be pull planned within the time between the due date and the current date, SyteLine “push-plans” the entire demand forward in time, starting from the current date, out to an as-soon-as-possible date. APS never plans into the past (unlike MRP, which allows start dates in the past).
• APS does not automatically combine planned orders for items that are needed within the same period of time. You can set the Planned Orders Consolidation options on the APS tab of the Planning Parameters form if you want planned orders to be combined, such as for a “day’s supply.”
• APS does not always recommend moving a job to an earlier date to satisfy a demand. Instead, it creates a new planned order due earlier than the existing firmed job. However, if the supply is available within the Supply Usage Tolerance, SyteLine will use the supply when the demand needs it. This behavior is appropriate in a finite capacity environment because you may be able to feasibly fit in a small job for a small order in situations where a larger job could not be moved.

Methods of Planning

You run SyteLine APS in the following situations:

APS Planning Form

When you initially set up SyteLine, and then on a scheduled basis (such as nightly), you run APS Planning to synchronize all demands with the latest inventory, supply, shifts, and resources information. You can run APS Planning for a single site or globally across all sites defined on the APS Sites and Alternative Management form. You can also set up SyteLine to replicate demand transfer orders to your supply sites.

SyteLine deletes all existing plan information and regenerates it using the latest data. In most situations, you will run APS Planning for a long horizon, such as one or two months. (If you are using Scheduling, you will likely run the Scheduler with a shorter horizon, such as one or two days.) The APS Planning activity creates planned orders and exception messages.

Incremental Planning

When you save certain types of transactions (such as customer orders and job orders), and the Plan on Save field is selected on the transaction, SyteLine inserts the new demand into the existing APS plan. The demand is planned using the inventory, supplies, and capacity that were not allocated to other demands during the last run of APS Planning or by demands that were previously incrementally planned.

Get ATP/CTP

For certain transaction types, SyteLine can insert a single demand/line item into a temporary “test” copy of the plan to determine feasibility. In Infinite APS mode, the resulting availability date is referred to as the available-to-promise (ATP) date. In APS mode, it is the capable-to-promise (CTP) date. The ATP/CTP process returns a projected availability date for the demand; if the date is acceptable, you can allow SyteLine to insert the demand incrementally into the actual plan.

Planned Orders & Interaction with the Scheduler

When you run APS Planning, SyteLine creates planned orders for demands that were not satisfied by on-hand inventory and planned supplies. On the Shop Floor Control Parameters form, you can specify that the Scheduler consider these planned orders as demands that must allocate resources (thus creating a more realistic scheduling simulation).
After you firm the planned order into a job, purchase order, etc., you can run APS Planning again to plan the new demand (using its routing/BOM).

When you then run the Scheduler, the operation start and end dates are based on the dates APS calculated for the original planned order (the operation start and end dates may change depending on the rules set up for the Scheduler). Subsequent runs of APS Planning will treat those scheduled operations as “frozen,” and will not move the operation start and end dates. However, subsequent runs of the Scheduler may move the operation start and end dates again based on the latest information.

Take the Next Step

Speak with a BBTS team member today to gain a better understanding of how Infor SyteLine could work for you. BBTS has implemented SyteLine successfully over 165 times since 2013 with a proven process that begins with improving inventory control, planning and forecasting, financial close, and other business processes. BBTS then standardizes these process best practices in SyteLine to ensure they are followed. BBTS also provides post-implementation SyteLine enhancements, upgrades, business process improvements, and workflow optimization.