Optessa

There is intense pressure to remain competitive, flexible and cost-effective in today’s markets. Manufacturers constantly strive to increase market share while streamlining production and cutting costs. The automotive market is a perfect example. Customers now have extensive choice of models, colors, interiors, engines and trim levels.

Additional options such as moon roofs, DVD players, in-car navigation, and satellite radios are being offered in an effort to increase market share. These choices have radically increased the complexity manufacturing plants have to handle.

Solution
To address these challenges, some of the world’s largest and most complex auto manufacturers use Optessa MLS (Multiline Sequencing & Scheduling) to effectively optimize and balance auto assembly planning, sequencing and scheduling, across all product lines and constraints. Optessa MLS has the key capability to model and schedule, in a single application of the system, multiple lines in a plant at different tiers. Enhanced usability enables mapping of the workflows of a typical assembly operation. Optessa MLS is built around a distributed architecture for scalability, load balancing, and rapid computation to solve large scheduling problems

The Optessa MLS platform
Sequencing and Scheduling
OPTESSA MLS employs modern optimization techniques which can rapidly generate “near optimal” solutions for the most complex problems. The output is a global optimal solution rather than just a local optimal solution. This is of great value when considering high-level constraints such as distributions and complex patterns. Users can quickly configure the length of any given scheduling run and choose from several different optimization techniques.

Optessa MLS is truly a ‘light-touch’ system. It can be seamlessly implemented in any environment in as little as twelve weeks. The system is completely platform independent. The user interface runs in any standard web browser, making Optessa MLS the ultimate thin client.

Proven Benefits
Optessa has enabled leading auto makers to address the challenges of increasingly tighter delivery schedules as they move towards a truly flexible and lean manufacturing environment.

• Stabilize Material Flows (“Heijunka”)
  Solve for all rules and constraints (plant, supplier and sales)
  Smooth all options, features and sub-assemblies, down to hourly level
  Maintain integrity of base sequence when rescheduling
• Smooth Work Load
  Evenly favorable solution quality across horizon
  Smooth total tact time across all bins
  Smooth idleness or overtime
• Reduce OTD Time & Increase Customer Satisfaction
  Solve the more complex problem arising from smaller planning windows
  Meet delivery dates
• Reduce Finished Goods Inventories
  At dealers and in pipeline
  Reduced in plant WIP buffers
• Improve FIFO Conformance Of Final Off Sequence
• Improve Effectiveness of Planning And Production Control Functions
  Reduce scheduling/rescheduling effort (by -90%)
  Eliminate manual errors
  Permit Production Controller to focus on managing scheduling process and coordination
• Reduce Cap-Ex
  Use forecast and planning data when planning new vehicle / feature introduction
• Reduce Costs

Additional Capabilities
The power of Optessa comes from the application of a general, flexible, and powerful approach to production planning, scheduling, and execution:
Real Time Execution
Optessa MLS with Real Time Sequencing (MLS-RTS) combines with the power of the MLS Platform to enable real-time automated re-sequencing of in-plant and out-of-plant scheduling and sequencing, giving manufacturers the power to respond, re-sequence, and refocus their operations in real time.

Optessa MLS-RTS capabilities enable the optimized schedules to be automatically re-sequenced within the scheduling month, week, day, or even hour, based on pre-defined triggers or manually as ad-hoc needs arise.

Optessa MLS-RTS can be seamlessly integrated with plant level systems:

• Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)
• Line control systems
• Directly integrated with the Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) controlling ASRS or other storage buffers

Planning
Optessa MLS with Multi-Line Planner (MLS-MLP) adds the powerful component for planning, selection and allocation at the global level. Optessa MLP can optimally select from order pools to satisfy:

• Material, plant, and labor constraints: plant capacities, in-house capacities, critical supplier capacities
• Regional and dealer allocation rules
• Order priorities: fixed, fleet, forecast orders

Optessa MLP can handle very large problems: 1000s of rules, millions of orders

Optessa Optimization

• Fast, Flexible and Scalable
• Patent pending technology that can support a wide range of constraints across all tiers of manufacturing
• Combines modern combinatorial optimization methods with classic LP / IP optimization
• Delivers near optimal solutions to complex sequencing and scheduling problems
• Offers a range of standard constraint types that can be used to enforce a variety of rules and constraints
• Always delivers a solution
• Solves problems previously considered to be intractable
• Proven in diverse manufacturing environments, ranging from cars to ATVs and power equipment to parts production
• Easy integration with existing systems