If you have ever tried to quickly
identify your critical planning issues by flipping through a thousand page BPCS™
MRP/MPS report, you'll love this Unbeaten Path enhancement.
Our PaperSaver report
provides users with true exception reporting for the BPCS master production scheduling and
material requirements planning systems.
It focuses attention on the issues
that really do need prompt management attention.
Unbeaten Path's design gives the user
flexibility to establish decision rules to select a subset of the normal BPCS MRP/MPS
messages for printing. BPCS MRP/MPS messages which do not meet the decision rule
tolerances are not printed.
Users can specify a "Buffer
Days" (BfrD) tolerance for each of the five different types of BPCS MRP/MPS message.
Each BfrD tolerance is measured in full days. Here are some practical examples of how the
enhancement works.
A BfrD tolerance of 5 days is established by the user for de-expedite messages.
If BPCS identifies a situation which would ordinarily generate a
"de-expedite-by-three-days" message, this message is dropped by the PaperSaver
before printing.
A BfrD tolerance of 4 days is established by the user for expedite messages. If
BPCS identifies a situation which would ordinarily generate a
"expedite-by-four-days" message, this message is dropped by the PaperSaver
before printing.
A BfrD tolerance of 3 days is established for firm-up messages. Let's say that
the planning horizon date is through October 10th and the release date for a planned order
is October 12th. Our enhancement will then look ahead past the planning horizon by the
three day BfrD tolerance and prepare a firm-up message for printing.
These examples illustrate that our PaperSaver enhancement provides two general
benefits.
First, it serves as a screen to shield the user from BPCS messages that have little real
value. Acting on messages of this genre typically introduce unnecessary noise into an MRP
system.
Second, the enhancement searches for and presents actionable messages that the standard
BPCS MRP/MPS report would not have otherwise generated.
The following real-life statistics were obtained from a division
of Textron Corporation — which purchased Unbeaten Path's PaperSaver for BPCS
MRP exception reporting.
"Vanilla"
BPCS MRP200 Program
Results
Paper Saver Results With Zero
Buffer Days Specified
(least
favorable scenario)
Number
of planned items:
33,201
33,201
Total
number of exception messages generated:
7,610
7,610
Total
number of printed pages:
almost 5,000
156
Total
AS/400 execution time:
Several hours plus significant print time.
23 minutes
plus some print time.
Typical
user feelings:
Users feel guilty because they never get around to reviewing all the
printed exception messages.
Users feel great because their
job is more organized
and cut down
to a reasonable size.
The users at Textron also appreciated other facets of Paper
Saver's functionality which are not addressed with "vanilla" BPCS software.
Many of these additional features helped users to organize their jobs more effectively and
focus on truly important exception messages. A short summary of key functionality
differences appears on the following page.
"Vanilla" BPCS Functionality
Paper Saver Functionality
Can
exception messages be printed sorted by type of message?
no
yes
The user has the option of printing in item
sequence or message sequence.
Can
"firm-up" and "release" messages be printed for a user-specified
period of future time?
no
yes
There is flexibility to look forward a
user-specified number of days for firm-up and release messages.
Can
users exclude one or more specific kinds of messages from the report?
no
yes
The user can exclude one or more message types
from the printed report.
Can
users adjust the start date of the exception message reporting?
no
yes
Users can specify the start date so as to
focus on messages from earlier or later time periods.
If
the range of planner codes overlaps with the range of buyer codes, is there an easy way to
select exception messages for:
a. Only all planners?
b. Only all buyers?
no, no
yes, yes
Users have the option of printing messages for
only one buyer, or only one planner, or all buyers, or all planners, or for user defined
buyer/planner combinations.
