FDS has in depth understanding of Operations Management as it applies to discrete manufacturing industry. This has come about as a result of numerous assignments handled by FDS in areas in a diverse range of industries. These include specific assignments in inventory management, business process re-engineering and optimization to building complete solutions for integrated transaction management, planning and scheduling.

FDS has thus provided solutions in the areas of transaction processing, inventory management, shop floor management, planning, scheduling, sequencing and optimization. These solutions cover the entire supply chain and have been implemented in truly multi-echelon systems both for single or multi plant operation.

FDS has built integrated and mission critical transaction processing systems that cover:

• Collaborative exchange of supply schedules with vendors
• Receiving
• Receiving Quality Management
• Inward Stores recording
• Purchase Management
• Outsourcing Management
• Engineering (Bill of Material, Item and other basic masters, Route Sheet management, Engineering Change Management)
• Store Definitions (Multiple Store Types – bought out, in process and finished good stores and Multiple Store Locations within each type)
• Stores Management (Receipt/Issue/Return/Dispatch transactions, Inventory accounting, Inventory Valuation – FIFO/LIFO/Weighted, Lot Track trace, Fast/Slow/Non-moving inventory identification, Multiple units of measure for stock keeping/receiving/issue, physical stock recording, consumption recording to Profit and Loss Account)
• Quality Assurance
• WIP tracking (based on individual Manufacturing Orders or based on Item Codes)
• Product Costing (standard and manufacturing order wise)
• Manufacturing Order and KANBAN generation and priming
• Sales Order Management (Price List management, Product Master, Customer Master, Enquiry, Quotations, Order Acknowledgement, Invoicing)
• Dispatch (Stock allocation, picking, packing slip generation, dispatch)
• Product Configuration
• Extraction of business critical information from all above areas
• Customer Relationship Management

FDS has acquired considerable expertise in designing, developing and implementing Material and Capacity Planning systems. FDS offers traditional MRPII planning systems as well as Advanced Planning and Scheduling systems. With its long years of experience in the manufacturing sector, FDS has built specific versions of such systems for different styles of manufacturing.

Thus FDS offers specific systems that cater to the planning requirements of Made to Order, Made to Stock and Mixed Mode manufacturing styles. Further, FDS is possibly the only company that can effectively address planning/scheduling requirements of repetitive assembly line operations: Automobiles, White Goods, High-tech electronic components. This is because our planning systems for this sector have been designed to work on Takt Times.

FDS planning/scheduling systems address following critical requirements:

• Adress simultaneously material, capacity, manpower, tool constraints
• Equally effective for planning across single or multi plant situations
• Multi constraint planning for a truly multi-echelon manufacturing setup
• Can take a combination of Customer Orders and Stock Orders as input
• Yield factors, lot sizing and safety stocks can be considered while generating planned requirements
• Flexible planning horizon and time buckets.
• Bulk or individual release of Planned requirements.
• Bulk or individual conversion of released requirements into Purchase and Subcontract Orders.
• Capacity to Promise and Available to Promise capabilities
• Provides multilevel pegging capabilities
• Stock allocation capabilities
• Selective clubbing of Manufacturing Orders within specific time buckets.
• Output fully integrated to Shop floor Scheduling module.

FDS has been deeply involved in shop floor scheduling since 1988. FDS has handled scheduling assignments in Mould/Die Shops, Press Shops, Machinery Manufacturers (Boilers, Machine Tools, Engines) and general purpose Machine Shops.

FDS scheduling system is truly a complete shop floor management system. This is because; in addition to Scheduling you can build a model of your shop floor, capture shop status, release manufacturing orders and carry out “What If” analysis.

These are multi constraint scheduling systems that simultaneously consider Capacity, Manpower and Tool constraints.

FDS finite capacity scheduling systems have following capabilities:

• Dynamically generates Lead Times based on Order Load and finite availability of machine, manpower and tool capacity.
• Comprehensive WIP accounting
• Powerful “Capacity to Promise” capabilities
• Large number of scheduling rules to choose from
• Route Sheets to define setup, cleanup, production
• Allows linear as well as networked route sheets. Schedules based on such constraints
• Transfer batch features and capabilities
• Powerful features for grouping similar orders to be scheduled on common machines
• Rich and easy to understand outputs in the form of Gantt charts, Zoom Views, Graphs etc.
• Order link definition through Bill of Material, manually or based on data imported from outside business systems. Schedules generated based on such constraints to realistically schedule components, subassemblies and assemblies
• Multiple machine definition for scheduling individually or simultaneously on selected machines
• Split factor (number of splits allowed) definition at each operation
• Interactive operation drag and drop, data editing, batch splitting
• Locking/unlocking operations individually
• Suspending orders at operation level
• Features to download required data from other business systems quickly and easily

The planning and scheduling systems currently available worldwide are ineffective in planning/scheduling of repetitive shops. This is because all such planning/scheduling systems work on Manufacturing Order numbers. But, repetitive shops are managed on Part Numbers and not on Lot or Manufacturing Order numbers. The reality in repetitive shops is that multiple batches of a limited number of parts are manufactured repeatedly. Further, each such part is used in multiple products or assemblies (This makes traditional approach of Pegging and Stock Allocation to individual Manufacturing Orders meaningless).

Therefore, in repetitive shops machine level scheduling, manufacturing progress updates and Work in Process status reporting have to be done on Part Numbers.

FDS has devised a unique approach to address these peculiar needs of repetitive shops. FDS approach allows it to schedule repetitive shops on Part Numbers. It also ensures that repetitive shops could be operated on Lean philosophy.

This approach considers demands for individual Parts, production rates of individual machines, current buffer status (both at Stores and in process buffers) and WIP to ensure that individual Parts are scheduled so as to minimize in process inventory.

Assembly Line Sequencing

FDS has developed solutions to address Sequencing requirements of assembly line operations. These are ideally suited to Automobile and White Goods manufacturers. The idea is to generate an optimum assembly sequence base on Assembly Line capacity and other applicable constraints.