Until now, only the finished products on several parallel packaging lines in the muesli production were planned on time. Raw material planning was carried out without taking into account continuous consumption and necessary idle times, resulting in inaccurate scheduling.
The upstream production steps can now also be closely examined and taken into account in a continuous multi-stage production planning from the raw material to the finished product. At any time the demand of the raw material, the multi-stage processing of the raw material to agglomerates, as well as their mixing to the finished product can now be efficiently planned and effectively controlled.
The dependencies between the production steps are shown in the detailed planning board and are automatically observed. Be it continuous consumption, in which the ready-mixed muesli is packaged directly and without intermediate storage into marketable articles, or agglomerates that must be stored for at least 24 hours before they can be further processed. The multitude of ingredients (oats, chocolate, fruit, etc.), which are processed in different ways (baking, watering, drying, etc.) and are subject to different time cycles, makes a high dependence of the individual production steps necessary. A complex starting point that requires a smart solution.
The technical solution is based on replacing the planning process in the SAP ERP system and transferring and mapping it into the existing SAP APO PP/DS. For the first time, production orders can be triggered in such a way that the individual upstream production steps are carried out hand in hand with continuous consideration of capacities. 4brands Reply has developed and provided the logic and technology for this. Kölln Flocken maintains the necessary master data. The actual solution as well as the division of tasks generated a high level of acceptance among all those involved. This led to rolling out to other upstream production and mixing plants.
Sebastian Krome, Head of the IT Department, Peter Kölln, comments: "The variety of product and packaging variants in the multi-stage process was a great challenge for our production planning. In particular, the old solution could not reflect the overlapping of a production order and several parallel packaging orders. With the solution implemented by 4brands Reply, our planners now get a realistic and thus feasible picture of production. With 4brands Reply's smart solution, we can now order raw materials as needed, reduce inventories and further optimize our production processes.