85% of clients who we engaged with in the past 12 months admitted that their scheduling process was more manual than they would like it to be. Do any of these pain points sound familiar?

• Schedulers spending too much time carrying out repetitive manual tasks, firefighting and reworking of infeasible schedules and focusing on planning every SKU, meaning no time to focus on Value Added activities for the business.
• Long manual process to amend production schedules in the occurrence of component supply, breakdowns or delays in production. Poor schedule adherence due to constantly changing and/or infeasible schedules, resulting in the need to hold high levels of inventory. Reduced uptime and throughput, resulting from multiple changeovers.
• Manual methods to consider constraints that are not modelled within existing software solution. Lack of automation. Poor visibility of short-term schedule changes and the impact on service levels.
• Poorly managed master data, resulting in high levels of manual planning.

If any of the above apply, then you would benefit from improving your companies’ level of Planning & Scheduling Maturity. Our agile implementation methodology is made up of key themes, including process development, user training, and implementation and adoption of best-in-class scheduling technology. This allows true planner enablement and drives clear business benefits, including, but not limited to increased asset utilisation, improved customer service levels, reduced component and WIP inventory levels, and improved visibility and agility.

SAP Digital Supply Chain evolution

If you closely follow the evolution of SAP Digital Supply Chain, you will be aware that:

• the Demand and Supply Planning elements that used to reside within Advanced Planning & Optimization (SAP APO) software have been shifted to Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP),
• Production Planning & Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS) has been integrated into S/4HANA in the form of Manufacturing for Planning & Scheduling (MP&S),
• for MP&S, SAP has recently released new functionality and a rich roadmap, including innovations in the areas of Synchronized Planning, PP Solver and Tank Planning.

This may be of interest to your business, but how does this fit within your overall S/4 Core ERP Roadmap?

You would be forgiven for thinking that this functionality, and ability to drive true business benefits is out of reach if you are not planning a move to S/4HANA for the rest of your Core ERP processes in the short-term. However, this is not the case. The release of the new S/4HANA DSC Edition means that you are now able to implement an MP&S Sidecar solution to compliment your existing SAP ECC solution. This provides full integration, the most up-to-date functionality, and positions your business to exploit the latest innovations available on the MP&S roadmap.

Conclusion

At Olivehorse, our Scheduling Migration Roadmap Service can help you to get started on this journey and to understand the options available to you. Our experts are experienced in migration, scheduling processes across multiple industries, software capability and future innovation to help you to understand your readiness for the next steps. We can provide input into your overall Digital Roadmap and help you to identify the tangible business benefits to help drive your Business Case. We can also provide a FIT-GAP based on your business processes and requirements compared to current functionality and known future innovations within MP&S.

To find out more or arrange a free ‘Planning & Scheduling Advisory’ session, please contact Olivehorse. We will be happy to help you understanding your companies’ options and requirements to formulate or refine your roadmap.