ABSTRACT
Effective use of new Advanced planning and scheduling (APS) tools enables planning cycles, capacity utilisation and inventory levels to be reduced while simultaneously increasing customer service levels. An APS system is a system that covers the entire supply chain, enabling real-time information to be extracted from that chain. An APS system covers the entire supply chain and uses up-to-date information to calculate the schedules it generates. APS systems are able to take account of the constraints present in an enterprise, such as capacity and materials. APS systems use these constraints to model the manufacturing and distribution environment. APS can prioritise preferences for the purposes of strategic decision making. The APS system must therefore be capable of integrating completely with the existing systems, since the APS system is entirely dependent on the availability and reliability of transactional data from these existing systems. A characteristic of APS is that planning issues are solved on the basis of a mathematical model.
