This project aimed to simplify the system landscape and reduce the total cost of ownership for production scheduling by replacing multiple scheduling solutions in ERP and standalone scheduling systems with a single global scheduling platform based on S/4HANA embedded PP/DS. The company operates numerous production facilities across several continents, where cost efficiency and significant sequence‑dependent setup times make optimal production sequencing essential.
The weekly supply planning process ensures that, at least for the first week beyond the scheduling horizon (the newly opened week), the required capacity does not exceed the available capacity for the most critical production resources. Planned orders generated by supply planning for this week are transferred into the production scheduling process. This transfer occurs weekly and is followed by automatic schedule generation, taking into account bottleneck resource availability, sequence‑dependent setup times, shared tool constraints, and—where relevant—labor availability. The resulting schedule can span multiple BOM levels and prevents infeasible production sequences. The system also alerts schedulers to potential component shortages.
Production schedulers then refine the automatically generated schedule to incorporate remaining constraints and operational insights not yet represented in the system.
Once production orders are released, they are sent to the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) via ERP. Actual production confirmations flow back through ERP into the scheduling system, ensuring planners always work with an up‑to‑date and accurate schedule.