Smart Factory ­­is a family of products for managing resources of engineering enterprises at the strategic and operational levels:

Strategic Planner provides medium-term and long-term volume-calendar production planning, ensuring coordinated management of production units of the enterprise.

Operational Scheduler provides operational intrashop planning and monitors implementation of work plans for stations and shift-daily tasks of workers, taking into account individual characteristics of orders, production technology, capabilities of workers and machine tools, etc.

System Demo Videos

Multi-agent Scheduler: Adaptive scheduling of tasks to resources

Knowledge Base: digital production model

IRKUT Corporation: End-to-end production scheduling (in Russian)

Our publications on Smart Factory (in English)

Our publications on Smart Factory (in Russian)

 

Smart system for strategic planning of machine-building enterprises

Purpose

Strategic Planner is designed to improve the quality and efficiency of medium-term and long-term volume-calendar production planning, and to ensure operation of the enterprise in a highly dynamic market environment related to receiving new orders for creating complex products, changing priorities of existing ones, delays in supply and joint execution of internal orders by adjacent workshops.

Implementation Results

Using Strategic Planner will allow enterprises to:

  • reduce complexity of forming the initial plan, monitoring and forecasting the enterprise result;
  • reduce complexity of keeping the plan up to date;
  • have a more reasonable, credible and transparent plan;
  • reduce late delivery of orders;
  • reduce production costs;
  • simulate operation of the enterprise in order to achieve the specified technical and economic performance indicators and / or terms (by changing the operation mode or increasing the number of staff);
  • optimize the number of employees at the enterprise.

Application

Strategic Planner can be efficiently used for volume-scheduling of long-term production programs of large machine-building enterprises.

The product is designed for enterprises that face the following problems in strategic planning:

  • the year plan is drawn up manually by PDO employees and then monthly also adjusted manually (dozens of products of several tens of thousands of parts each);
  • in the preparation of the annual plan, the complexity of the production of orders is known very roughly and is specified in the course of work (for example, repairs);
  • when drawing up a plan, it is almost impossible to take into account the real capacity of the workshops, taking into account the skills and availability of workers
  • it is difficult to calculate the risks in the production of orders taking into account changes in the supply of incoming parts, the number of workshops during the year, the cost of materials, etc .;
  • the increase in the discrepancy between the plan and the fact, the increase in the number of emergency orders, the uncontrolled increase in costs, possible penalties for failure to meet deadlines;

Using Strategic Planner will make it possible to solve the following tasks in the automated mode:

  • formation of the volume-calendar production plan, taking into account the capacity utilization;
  • coordination of plans between workshops-accessory;
  • building an adaptive strategic plan of the enterprise for a period of 1-5 years;
  • adaptive adjustment of plans at all levels when new events arrive in real time;
  • building a nomenclature plan for each shop of the enterprise, as well as determining the availability of components for each product at specified points in time.

Functionality

Entering orders in the form of expert assessment of labor intensity according to technological map of product movement between workshops, which is especially important in the absence of reliable data on technology (in standard hours)

Стратопланер Заказы

Drawing up a batch plan for estimating production throughput and realistic deadlines

Стратопланер Планирование

This presentation of plan makes it posible to see how orders are divided into batches and how these batches will be carried out, taking into account available resources of the enterprise. Batches are displayed in accordance with the following color indication:

  • Green — the batch will be completed within the contractual delivery deadline;
  • Yellow — the batch will be completed within the delivery deadline, but without any time reserve, so it may be delayed in case of unforeseen events;
  • Red — the batch will be completed after the delivery deadline.

Resource Load Plan

Стратоплане - выполнение заказов

When building a loading plan, the system combines the available resources into pools by specialties (locksmiths, turners, etc.) and predicts how these pools will be occupied by tasks requiring the attraction of these resources as part of the operations on current orders.

The resource load plan allows you to track down bottlenecks — resource pools that are already maximally loaded, so an increase in the number of orders may result in insufficient resources to fulfill them. Such information can be used to analyze the situation in the enterprise or its subdivision and when making decisions about hiring or reallocating resources.

Analysis of Plan Indicators

To analyze the results of planning, the user is provided with business radars, reflecting a number of indicators, primarily financial ones.

Стратопланер - бизнес-радары

Enterprise Resource Management

The main type of events within the system is the change in the number of resources, for example, the pool of employees or the availability of materials or purchased parts. The change in the number of resources is made by the user in the interface for entering events.

Стратоплане - события

Advantages

  • Makes it possible to see the general plan for the enterprise as a whole for coordination with workshops;
  • Ability to track resource bottlenecks in real time;
  • Dynamic planning of new orders by events, taking into account capacity of shops and complexity of the order (at the top level, in standard hours);
  • Generates set-up dates for beginning and completion of work in workshops;
  • Coordinates (through interaction) dates with operational shop planners;
  • Recalculation of plan and production indicators in real time;
  • Ability to estimate deadlines for execution of a new order and its impact on deadlines for delivery of other products by changing planning priorities;
  • All workshop planners in the enterprise will work as a single organism.

 

Learn more about Smart Factory: Strategic Planner

Smart system for operational management of production workshops

Purpose

The system is designed for dynamic planning and monitoring of implementation of work plans for stations and shift-daily tasks of workers in procurement, tooling, mechanical assembly, testing and repair shops of engineering enterprises.

 

Operational Scheduler allows users to plan production schedule, taking into account individual characteristics of orders, production technology, capabilities of workers and machine tools and a number of other features.

Implementation Results

Operational Scheduler allows enterprises to gain significant effect:

  • increase equipment load by 20%;
  • increase production by 1 worker — by 30%;
  • reduce the risk of disruption of production time;
  • increase transparency of production processes – by up to 90%;
  • control costs by up to 100% in real time;
  • reduce actual production cycles by up to 30%;
  • reduce stocks of finished products, WIP (work in progress) and warehouse stocks – by up to 15%;
  • increase efficiency of management decisions;
  • reduce complexity of dispatching and forecasting enterprise results;
  • increase staff motivation and responsibility for the result.

Application

Operational Scheduler can be used for workshops of any mechanical assembly plants, which are characterized by:

  • complexity and dynamics of processes;
  • uncertainty of supply and demand;
  • individual approach to each manufactured product;
  • frequent product range updates;
  • production of small series of products.

All this requires high efficiency in decision-making from managers of departments, as well as adaptation of plans in case of unforeseen events in real time.

 

Operational Scheduler integrates with existing enterprise PLM and ERP systems (SAP, Infor, ADEM, Team Center, IT Enterprise, 1C and others) and allows users to adaptively rebuild and adjust plans for real-time events, coming from, for example, customers or other control systems, sensors of automatic production lines, foremen tablets or touch screens of workers in order to eliminate downtime and shortage of resources (expensive CNC machines or highly skilled workers).

 

During system application, a knowledge base about production processes, products and materials, equipment and employees will be created to ensure individual approach to each order or resource. This allows users to make plans more accurate and executable in any event, which includes appearance of a high-priority order, equipment failure, delays in delivery of materials, etc.

The system allows users to build a production schedule based on the following typical decision-making criteria in mechanical engineering:

  • ensuring proper quality of work;
  • deliverying an order on time;
  • minimizing production cost;
  • uniform load of workers.

Main users:

Dispatcher

  • formation of order list;
  • automatic formation of plan;
  • monitoring plan implementation.

Workshop Chief

  • automatic generation of a work plan and rescheduling for incoming events in real time;
  • specifying schedules of workers and their inaccessibility, visual display of the load on workers;
  • automatic generation of shift daily tasks and optimal distribution of tasks among workers.

Technologist

  • storage of data on orders: order specification, manufacturing technologies, necessary materials, tools, stages of production preparation;
  • storing and editing information about norms of operations;
  • marking stages of work on technology.

Foreman

  • interactive change of shift tasks for workers;
  • automatic issuance of shift-daily tasks for workers;
  • control of task execution, marking implementation.

Worker

  • getting shift-daily tasks;
  • marking task execution via the terminal and entering events (for example, machine breakdown);
  • personal profile control: the cost of performed operations is displayed on the terminal screen, so the worker can see and increase his salary, bringing more benefits to the enterprise.

Functionality

Keeping reference books

Operational Scheduler allows users to set data about customers, orders, processes, machines and competencies of workers, whose operations are planned for execution of orders.

Оперативный - инженер ПДБ

The system displays all orders of the workhop, with the current status and various filters for their visualization. Typical order statuses include: not started, planned, started, completed, in preparation, stopped, delayed, postponed, etc.

Automatic operational planning

The system generates master plan and a daily shift tasks automatically. Shift foremen receive a daily list of top-priority tasks for their workers and decide on redistribution of certain tasks.

Foremen can approve the proposed shift-daily task in whole or in part with the possibility of rescheduling, including in case of defective goods.

Оперативный - планирование

The event queue (at the bottom of the screen) allows users to enter information about new events and start rescheduling process, for example, putting a new order into production (its components are displayed on the left).

Оперативный - АРМ мастера

Foremen Automated Workstation allows users to check assignment of operations to workers and, if necessary, adjust it.

Monitoring order provision with components

Оперативный - справочник комплектующих

In this reference book marks are placed on provision of order with components and planned delivery dates.

Unified storage of technological information

Оперативный - АРМ технолог

Technologists can save versions of technologies and carry out quick search in their Automated Workstation, which significantly speeds up their work.

Worker’s Workstation

Allows employees to receive a constantly updated work plan, mark performance or add information about the impossibility of performing operations.

Оперативный - терминал рабочего

Monitoring plan implementation

The workshop chief’s information panel allows them to track information on selected orders in real time.

Текущие операции

Advantages

  • Always relevant production schedule, updated in real time.
  • Instant response to events.
  • Direct interaction with staff and field workers, staff involvement in the process of achieving results.
  • Flexible work with technological processes.
  • Accounting for technological processes, qualifications, categories and workers’ characteristics when planning.
  • On-line integration with enterprise PLM and ERP systems.
  • High performance of the planning process.

Implementation Experience

Operational Scheduler is in industrial operation at three Russian enterprises: Izhevsk Motor Plant Aksion-Holding, Kuznetsov, and Aviaagregat. Top-management of these enterprises marked the tangible economic effect from introduction of the system. In particular, the following measured results are noted for Izhevsk motor-factory Aksion-Holding:

  • Increase in gross output of the workshop by 5-10%.
  • Reduction of “running around” between different departments and sections in search of documents. Prior to introduction of the system, 7 people were doing this for 2 hours daily. Savings — 14 standard hours of working time daily.
  • Reducing cost of communication and search for information on orders and manufactured products for analyzing work on the order. Before introduction of the system, on average, at least 1 hour was spent by the deputy head of production department.
  • Possibility to analyze the order delivery date in comparison with all other orders. As a result, it became possible to more clearly assess risks and receive forecasts for several months in advance — 128 standard hours per month for all participants.
  • Possibility to analyze technological processes and their norms at any time without searching for paper documents — 23 standard hours per month.
  • Possibility to analyze the production cycle — 256 standard hours per month.
  • Possibility to analyze the workload and labor productivity of workers — 48 standard hours per month.
  • Automatic formation of daily shift tasks for one month in advance. Before introduction of the system, this process took 2 working days of 4 people. Savings — 64 working hours per month.
  • All major routine operations are automated, which reduces the complexity of management (for example, prices are calculated automatically), but they can be conveniently and simply refined in any direction — 528 standard hours per month.

Currently, about 30 people use the system daily in their work. Among the main users there are: workshop management, planning and dispatching bureau, rate setters, foremen, technologists, controllers and a number of other employees of workshops and enterprise as a whole.

Learn more about Smart Factory: Operational Planner