Addressing Supply Chain Disruptions and Demand Volatility with Real-Time Planning

Disruptions are inevitable in the manufacturing industry. This can range from supply chain delays, production disruptions, or even workforce shortages.  

For the sake of this article, let’s imagine you’re running an automotive parts manufacturing plant. The purpose of your factory is to supply steering components to multiple car brands, each with strict deadlines and steady production volume expectations each week. Now, two major disruptions happen: a shipment of components arrives late, causing a bottleneck in production, and there’s a sudden surge in electric vehicle orders, which involves your customers’ needing more parts than expected.  

If you don’t have a system that’s flexible, your production schedule would be disrupted. Orders would be delayed, costs would rise, and you have the unfortunate event of losing customers. On the other hand, if a factory leverages a combined planning, scheduling, and execution solution, it will have quicker reaction times to changes, including constrained supply and demand fluctuations, and on-time delivery pressures. Real-time decision-making coupled with intelligent modeling of inventory using optimization techniques delivers superior outcomes. 

Why not take advantage of a flexible system and avoid chaos on your shop floor? Schedule and sequence optimization related to inventory positioning is key as time buffers dampen the effects of variation at the factory level. The result is that small changes are absorbed by the buffers and do not require a reschedule to deliver targeted outcomes, while material changes are absorbed by real-time reaction to the changes through the integrated planning, scheduling, and execution solution. 

So, remember the automotive parts scenario? With real-time planning in place, that late component shipment wouldn’t damage production. In fact, the system would adjust its schedule and reallocate resources shifting production priorities. Similarly, the sudden ask on EV orders would involve real-time adjustments, overall ensuring that customer demands are met. 

Manufacturers that adopt integrated planning, scheduling, and execution solutions minimize delays, reduce costs, and maintain smooth operations. In all honesty, the question here isn’t whether disruptions will happen, it’s whether your factory is ready to handle them, and it can easily be avoided. Are you ready to embrace an integrated planning, scheduling, and execution solution?