Blog
-
The Ripple Effect of Implementing APS
By: John Maher | March 13, 2025 | 5 min read Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software can dramatically simplify daily life for production planners and schedulers tasked with creating and optimizing production plans. However, the benefits of optimized production extend far beyond the role of production planning and scheduling. With the right tools, an…
-
The Role of Algorithms in Production Planning and Scheduling
By: John Maher | January 20, 2025 | 7 min read In my last post, I talked about the challenges of using spreadsheets to manage production planning and scheduling in complex manufacturing. Some of you have probably experienced those challenges first-hand, but if you want to read that post, you can access it here. If you’re…
-
Will 2025 be the Year You Finally Ditch the Spreadsheets?
By: John Maher | January 14, 2025 | 5 min read It’s January 2025, and many of the manufacturers I know are still neck-deep in strategic and operational planning. They need to get better at meeting customer commitments this year. They need to cut waste. They need to trim costs. They need to cut lead…
-
What’s the Difference Between a Manufacturing Bottleneck and a Constraint?
Bottlenecks and constraints are two terms that are often used interchangeably in Demand-Driven Manufacturing as well as in discussions on Lean Manufacturing and flow. It’s easy to use one term when you actually mean the other. However, since these two limiters on throughput need to be addressed differently, it’s important to understand the distinction. What…
-
Increase Throughput by Replacing Manufacturing Productivity and Efficiency Metrics with These Two KPIs
Manufacturing productivity is a useful metric for measuring the health of manufacturing at a national or global level because it tells us something about whether our factories, in general, are working or sitting idle. But at the level of the individual factory, productivity as a performance metric can be problematic. Before we travel too far…
-
The Best Time to Kick Off a Continuous Improvement Initiative
Prosperity is perhaps one of the greatest obstacles to continuous improvement in manufacturing. When things are going well, we don’t feel the need to make improvements quite as keenly. For example, instead of focusing on removing waste in our factories to become more cost competitive, we might opt to add capacity so we can keep…
