Backchannel production planning in electronics manufacturing

The bottom line: absolute deadline compliance, shorter setup times, maximised machine utilisation, and a resilient production that can respond to changes with great flexibility.

“In today’s dynamic electronics manufacturing environment, production planning is no longer a linear process,” explains Thomas Marktscheffel, Director Product Management Software Solutions at ASMPT SMT Solutions. “The only way to maximise your flexibility and machine utilisation is with a closed-loop planning process where data streams flow between applications in a continuous optimisation loop.”

After a customer order has been entered into the ERP system, the data is transferred to the two-stage planning system of WORKS, which automatically initiates a purely customer-oriented rough planning process that determines a suitable production window while taking into account factors like minimised setup times, material bottlenecks and the specific availability of resources.

Seamless integration and transparency

As modern high-mix/low-volume production environments must deal with constantly changing situations, flexibility is an absolute must. Accordingly, WORKS reacts dynamically. It automatically optimises planning and production data in a continuous feedback loop until the best production strategy has been determined just as the production run commences.

This detailed planning approach combines the due date requirements taken from the ERP system with the current production situation on the shop floor while also taking factors like new orders, cancellations, and quantity changes into account. Since completed production jobs can be automatically reported back to the ERP system, schedulers have an accurate overview of available production capacities when they talk to customers.

From an order's acceptance to its start of production, the planning process is designed to always find the most efficient solution that makes the best possible use of existing machine and personnel capacities. This reduces idle times and costs and increases the factory’s flexibility so that it can respond more effectively to schedule changes and rush jobs.

Significant competitive advantages

With its backchannel planning approach, ASMPT continues to implement its intelligent factory strategy, which relies on the continuous non-proprietary exchange of data via standardised interfaces in order to provide customers with investment protection and significant competitive advantages.