Detailed Planning and Sequencing
In short-term production planning, efficiency and responsiveness are paramount. The PPC Sequencer provides a robust, constraint-aware solution for detailed order sequencing and capacity levelling — ensuring that manufacturing runs smoothly, even in the face of complexity and variability.
Fully embedded within SAP and tightly integrated with other modules of the Production Planning Cockpit, the PPC-Sequencer empowers planners to optimise production order flows based on key parameters such as setup time, due dates, capacity availability, and product characteristics. Automatic proposals can be manually fine-tuned in an intuitive, graphical environment to deliver plans that are both feasible and efficient.
What´s your Business Impact?
With the PPC Sequencer, manufacturing organisations can:
- Improve production efficiency by reducing setup times and smoothing resource utilisation
- Respond quickly to machine breakdowns, staff shortages, or late material arrivals
- Increase planning transparency across production levels and order networks
- Ensure feasible schedules with real-time constraint handling and exception alerts
- Enable campaign, block, and key customer capacity planning for strategic flexibility
Whether used for day-to-day sequencing or as part of a broader PPC planning flow, the PPC Sequencer ensures your detailed plans are realistic, efficient, and fully aligned with operational constraints.
Core Capabilities
The PPC Sequencer supports the planning and rescheduling of operations and production orders across multiple levels — down to individual operations — using a combination of automatic logic and manual control.
- Sequencing by operation or order level with resource-specific constraints
- Prioritisation of orders based on due dates, customer requirements, or production strategies
- Drag-and-drop scheduling on a graphical board with real-time feedback
The PPC Sequencer dynamically minimises setup times by applying setup matrices and sequence-dependent transitions. Campaigns and blocks can be formed based on product characteristics (e.g. colour or material group) to further reduce changeovers.
- Dynamic setup calculation using setup groups and transition matrices
- Campaign creation for similar product runs
- Setup time visualisation during scheduling
Integrated pegging logic allows planners to trace relationships across all levels of the production network. Orders are automatically linked to their demand sources, enabling planners to assess the downstream and upstream impact of scheduling decisions.
- Support for make-to-stock and make-to-order flows
- Top-down and bottom-up planning strategies
- Jump navigation between superordinate and subordinate orders
All scheduling actions consider real-world constraints in real-time, ensuring feasibility across:
- Capacity availability (including overloads)
- Material/component availability
- Personnel and tooling resources
- Customer-specific rules and planning restrictions
Planning Features
Planners benefit from a flexible interface that allows seamless switching between manual control and automatic logic:
- Auto-generated schedules using customisable planning heuristics (e.g. gapless, JIT, setup-minimised)
- Manual adjustment using drag-and-drop with full visibility of buffer times, lead times, and coverage
- Graphical and tabular overviews of gaps, overloads, and alternative resources
Simulate changes and assess their effects before committing them to production:
- Visualise impact on setup times, capacity, and due date compliance
- Simulate operations on alternative machines or time slots
- Highlight alerts, exceptions, and KPIs (e.g. delay buffers, missing parts)
The PPC Sequencer works in concert with other components of the Production Planning Cockpit:
- Seamless handover from PPC Rough-Cut Dispatcher to detailed scheduling
- Integration with alert management for proactive rescheduling
- Compatible with the PPC Simulation Cost Monitor for cost-based decision support
- Works in conjunction with ATP checks and real-time component availability
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