BOULDER, Colo. – Pelion Systems, the market leader in Manufacturing Process Optimization (MPO) solutions, today announced a major functional new release of its enhancements to its Pelion MPO Demand Manager software manager. Developed to augment the company’s suite of MPO software and services used to implement and automate demand-pull manufacturing methods, Demand Manager further enables manufacturers to realize the full benefits of lean flow and six sigma manufacturing. New features provide the necessary adaptability for scheduling of upstream departments, lines and facilities based on actual demand.
“Building based on actual demand is fundamental to Lean Manufacturing and the elimination of waste,” said Ralph Rio, ARC Advisory Group. “Moving responsiveness to actual consumption further up the value stream - as offered with Pelion’s Demand Manager - is a very good thing.”
Featuring a real-time resource-planning engine, Demand Manager maximizes efficiencies by comparing actual demand volume to factory resources to optimize daily scheduling, production sequencing and load/line balancing. In dealing with complex mixed-model manufacturing modes, Demand Manager gives factory planners extensive, actionable visibility into the entire value stream to manage resources and run the factory with daily optimized schedules that have been adjusted against a variety of manufacturing constraints, rules and logic.
“The enhanced Pelion MPO Demand Manager gives operations managers superior insight into the capacity and labor requirements of daily and varied customer demands, and provides them the actionable visibility and control to meet these demands,” said Dave Gleditsch, chief technology officer at Pelion Systems. “Access to this type of customer-driven manufacturing information is a tremendous competitive advantage as customers in our automotive group are now experiencing the ability to be more responsive to market needs and the ever-tightening production lifecycle.”
Pelion’s MPO software suite integrates with existing MRP, ERP and APS systems, thereby enhancing the performance of these enterprise applications. With the new enhancements to Demand Manager, manufacturers gain the ability to accurately execute the following operations on a real time basis:
Demand Analysis and Planning – By integrating advanced planning processes with real-time pull production management, Demand Manager enables resource planning on a daily basis or over a planning horizon, alerting planners to potential resource violations. Master production schedules are downloaded directly from existing ERP/MRP and APS systems into the Pelion Demand Analysis Engine enabling planners and schedulers to model, evaluate and plan against a variety of scenarios reducing the occurrence of last minute “firefighting” when inventory constraints come into play.
Lean Flow Scheduling – The Lean Flow Scheduling portion of Demand Manager provides planners and managers the capability to develop daily plans that support real-time demand. Demand Manager provides a variety of scheduling methods, including kanban, demand-leveling, heijunka, and mixed-model production to minimize set-up times, shorten cycle times and manufacture a greater variety of products in the most cost-effective, efficient and responsive manner possible.
Lean Sequencing – Lean Sequencing defines the optimum order for products to be produced each day based on dynamic customer demand. Many factory managers require tools to drive the specific sequence of actual production on the shop floor. In order to optimize efficiency and predictability, the production line is provided with a specific order or sequence that optimizes labor efficiency and material flow, while reducing the overall setup times required and bottleneck wait times experienced.
Lean Optimization and Labor Planning – Labor and machine resource planning that is done with high-level, generalized assumptions can result in a significant waste of labor and capital, each and every day. Demand Manager allows manufacturers to analyze scenarios and recommends the best plans according to their specific business-driven rules and actual customer demand.
Finished Goods Inventory (FGI) Balancing – By “right-sizing” Finished Goods Inventory levels, manufacturers gain optimal Lean and supermarket demand pulls. The Demand Manager module now integrates with Demand Analysis for statistical demand levels and provides target inventory levels for automated electronic FGI replenishment signals.
About Pelion Systems
Pelion Systems is the market leader in Manufacturing Process Optimization (MPO) software products and services based on Lean, Six Sigma, and Flow Manufacturing principles. With Pelion, leading manufacturers are able to liberate capital, grow profits and sustain breakthrough performance by optimizing operations and extend their supply network to include suppliers, customers and outsourced service providers in their business transformation. Pelion MPO integrates easily with existing ERP, MRP and APS systems and is available scaling from a single facility to an enterprise implementation. Based in Boulder, Colo., Pelion has sales and marketing offices in Chicago, Detroit and Austin. For more information about Pelion’s product and service offerings visit www.pelionsystems.com or call 877-669-4324.