Car-Sequenzing – flexis article published
The Association for Logic Programming (ALP) published a flexis article on "Solving the Car Sequencing Problem with Constraint Logic Programming in the Automotive Industry". It describes The Company's solution approach concerning the challenge of finding a production sequence that fulfills a given set of hard constraints and is optimized with regard to the weighted number of soft constraint violations.
You can read and download the article here.
flexis at ManuFuture Conference 2011
The Vision of winning a major share of world Manufacturing output in the future knowledge-driven economy
flexis was part of the ManuFuture Conference 2011. The conference was held on 24th to 25th October 2011 in the city of Wroclaw, the capital of Lower Silesia Region, and was organized within the official program of the Polish Presidency of the EU Council.
Participation was by invitation only, which shows the widely recognized outstanding status of flexis in research topics concerning innovative production and logistics.
The mission of the European Technology Platform ManuFuture is to propose, develop and implement a strategy based on Research and Innovation, capable of speeding up the rate of industrial transformation to high-added-value products, processes and services, securing high-skills employment and winning a major share of world Manufacturing output in the future knowledge-driven economy.
The focus of the conference was on how to ensure successful cooperation in High Added Value global manufacturing between EU countries and countries from Central and Eastern Europe as well as within the EU itself.
In the conference, the following main areas were addressed:
- cooperation in global manufacturing,
- current stage of research and innovations in advanced manufacturing,
- SMEs in transforming European economies,
- industrial education,
- public engagement activities,
- effective models of academia-research-industry cooperation.
Additionally, flexis took the chance to exhibit a poster showing the technologies, experiences and knowledge of the company.
MAN Diesel & Turbo SE is planning with flexis
The flexis solution for Production Planning (ProPlan) optimizes the process from sales planning to product delivery.
MAN Diesel & Turbo SE in Augsburg relies on flexis Order Slotting when it comes to planning the production program. The particular challenge of producing large diesel engines and turbo engines is the time scope for the production steps. The inevitable planning horizon at MAN Diesel & Turbo extends three years into the future.
The flexis solution visualizes demands and capacities along the whole process chain – from the foundry to engine delivery. The aims are to achieve utilization which is as even as possible by means of an equal distribution of orders and prevent bottle-necks in the long term. The transparency, the highest degree of individual configurability and the elevated simulation capability of the flexis solution guarantees reliable short- middle- and long term planning-
Safety through simulation
Besides the outstandingly free configurability, one of the main benefits ProPlan offers is that the current workload can be indicated and optimized according to the specific demands. The simulation abilities of the tool guarantee reliability of the planning results – despite of the considerable planning complexity, long planning periods and the high degree of variability. This doesn’t only allow the consideration and evaluation of a certain variant, but also creation and comparison of several different variants.
With the help of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) the different scenarios can be validated. Thus the planner is able to ensure that he decides in favor of the best given alternative.
Cooperative appearance of flexis and SimaticIT
flexis and Simatic IT - cooperative appearance at "Manufacturing Excellence Days for Discrete Industries"
flexis AG participated in "Manufacturing Excellence Days for Discrete Industries" in Amberg on May 18th and 19th as a partner of Simatic IT (Siemens).
The event held the opportunity to get informed exclusively about the integrated solution portfolio of flexis AG in conjunction with the solutions of Simatic IT. Due to this cooperation we now have the chance to offer you an integrated solution from order entry to production control and assembly.
If you wish to receive more information, please contact us.
Feel free to send a message to: michael.schwemmle@flexis.de
flexis Sequencing at Audi Ingolstadt
Audi Ingoldstadt – Complex planning in minutes
In 2004, Audi was already able to implement complex planning problems in a very short time with flexis Sequencing. The easy to comprehend and graphic optimization model of the sequencing solution can be adapted to the changing daily circumstances and therefore simplifies sequencing. Instead of calculating the customer mix manually, which is time consuming, the solution at Audi in Ingolstadt generates a high quality result, which takes into account spacing, transition, and block constraints as well as different heuristics, such as uniform distribution.
Premiere of the next generation
With flexis AG updating its technologies, the existing and proven solution at Audi was refined even further. After a successful test phase with a transitional flexis solution, which showed how much added value the upgrade will yield, Audi Ingolstadt now uses the new flexis sequencing module 5.0 for sequencing.
With this update, an aggregation display (color, engine type, attributes) as well as a sequence quality evaluation are possible directly after sequence generation. Until now there was an additional step between sequencing and evaluation: data had to be exported and later imported to assess the sequence quality in a report system.
Fast and easy sequencing
Sequencing and its monitoring are merged in the new sequencing module, which noticeably accelerates sequence generation. In addition, flexis now needs only a third of the time for sequence computation. flexis 5.0 is more than just a refinement of the previous version; the update opens up completely new possibilities with regard to software user friendliness and planning simplification.
flexis at the best-practice-seminar in Steyr
flexis AG will participate in the best-practice-seminar “Modern methods of order processing in vehicle manufacturing”, that is taking place on April 13th at MAN Nutzfahrzeuge Österreich AG in Steyr. flexis contributes to the presentation of current approaches to research with a lecture dealing with “Order Processing in manufacturing industry – Quo vadis? A new approach and innovative planning processes”.
The seminar, that is initiated by Fraunhofer Austria Research GmbH, is referring especially to executive managers and employees from the different divisions of order processing.
When: 13.04.2011
10:00 – 17:00
Where: MAN Nutzfahrzeuge Österreich AG
Schönauer Straße 5
A-4400 Steyr
flexis at the 10th VDA Logistics Congress
flexis participated in the 10th VDA-Logistics-Congress, that was taking place in Wolfsburg from February 21st to 22nd.
The motto of the event was "Logistics move – Partnership for flexibility and efficiency". Main topics of the lectures were Capacity Planning and -control, Supply Chain Excellence and IT-requirements for a lean production.
flexis was presenting its product portfolio at a stand that was visible directly in the entrance foyer and had the opportunity to represent the company and conduct various interesting conversations there.
flexis at the Automotive Circle International Conference
flexis AG participated in the Automotive Circle International Conference that took place on February 9th and 10th 2011 in Bad Nauheim, putting an emphasis on "Assembly Engineering 2011".
Specific key questions addressed by the conference were focusing on value-added Processes, assembly production times, process ergonomics, possibilities for automation or the possibilities of more intelligent consignment and part logistics. Project results from globally leading OEM, important new developments from relevant system suppliers as well as trailblazing, practice-oriented studies from leading research institutions were presented. Plenary, focus group and one-on-one discussions additionally contributes to maximizing the event's benefit and networking opportunities.
Our company was not only attending the event but also contributing a lecture. Hansjörg Tutsch, Vice President Research of flexis AG and Stefan Auer from TU Vienna gave a practice-orientated insight into "Integrated sequencing and human-resource planning".
 |
|
flexis calculates Mercedes-Benz Car’s demand figures
Better long term planning
The central logistics at Mercedes-Benz Cars calculates its long term demand figures for the upcoming years on the basis of part numbers by using a flexis solution. flexis’ Demand Capacity Planning supports the planning process, which has so far been mostly done manually, with a system supported prognosis. This enables, for the first time, the calculation of global demand figures of large part number ranges – for all plants and series of Mercedes-Benz Cars.
In communication with sales, development, plants, and purchasing, the logistics department forecasts long term parts demand with flexis Demand Capacity Planning, which closes the gap at the end of the operational planning horizon. Actual orders only exist for the next nine months. In the past it was already possible to do detailed planning for the corresponding time horizon based on these orders. In addition, flexis Demand Capacity Planning now enables the calculation of demand and parts availability based on volume forecasting for a planning horizon of up to three years. In addition, flexis Demand Capacity Planning calculates part number requirements for this period, which can be compared with the available or agreed upon capacity, based on planned car volumes, configuration probabilities, and its underlying bill of material information.
Supported by the new vehicle production plan and in cooperation with the actual sales planning, 700,000 monthly demand figures for around 60,000 part numbers have already been calculated with the flexis solution and the results have been communicated to the suppliers.
Transparency of different resources
Besides the innovative demand calculation based on configuration forecasting, flexis Demand Capacity Planning offers another functionality, which simplifies the forward-looking and reliable planning considerably: the solution offers a graphic user interface, which allows the analysis of input data from varying source systems. The flexis installation hereby ensures that the data sources and their statuses can always be tracked. A shortage of part numbers of part families will be indicated in color and can be analyzed separately. This way bottlenecks can be recognized early on and resolved very specifically.
Forecasting creates planning security
Especially in times of hectic growth it pays off to be able to inform suppliers early on about future demand. With flexis Demand Capacity Planning flexis offers a solution which calculates long term part number demands and thus makes a valuable contribution to reliable demand and capacity planning.
High performance thanks to technological advance
flexis uses Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and single-page applications (SPA) for the implementation of its web solutions to guarantee maximum user friendliness and performance.
Through its innovative communication between client and server, flexis makes it possible to do fast and automatic updates of content, which is displayed to each user synchronously. If several users open the same database, it will also be updated at the same time. This is important especially for the flexis Monitoring solution, for which ongoing updating is essential. The conceptual design of flexis solutions contributes to higher performance, because not the entire page with the entire HTML code has to be reloaded when opening new pages.
flexis AG provides their customers with products that bring together pioneering ideas and the use of powerful technologies. The use of websites that are able to send notifications is an aspect which proves that flexis keeps track of innovations in the software market and anticipates the possibilities which result from them.