TALIKAPMSWe schedule you relax

FUTUREVISIBILITY

INCREASEPROFITS

ON-TIMEDELIVERY

INCREASETHROUGHPUT

REDUCECOST

TALIKAA COMPLETE PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

we have created a scheduling centric enterprise resource planning system.

�The Power to Manage

�INNOVATION AT THOMSON PRESS (INDIA) LIMITED

Thomson Press (India) Limited is the largest printer and integrated data services provider in India and South Asia. It is part of the India Today Group – one of India’s major media houses with diversified interest in publishing, printing, television, radio and now in advanced software product development. With hundreds of active print jobs each comprising of several elemental activities, day-to-day scheduling with end-to-end visibility of all orders was indeed a major problem for us. Like anyone, our first attempts were to look for readymade scheduling / ERP packages in the market to suit our requirement. After an extensive search we soon realised that real-time, micro-level scheduling that would decide what activities to perform now, and when they are over the next, with impact on completion times on all orders in-hand is supposed to be an impossible to solve problem in any reasonable time frame: mathematically classified as an NP-hard problem. Thus was the genesis of innovation at Thomson Press. We not just figured out how the scheduling problem could be easily solved but also created and perfected the solution painstakingly over more than a decade. What we have created is a scheduling centric enterprise resource planning system that not just solves our scheduling problem but can be applied to any kind of manufacturing or project industry.

ANY ANSWER TO THESE TWO SIMPLEQUESTIONS?

Given the existing load, when will a new

order be completed?

No matter what happens NOW, what is the impact

on all orders in-hand: revised completion date/time

for each order?

SCHEDULING PROBLEM SOLVED!

Scheduling is indeed a major issue in all manufacturing and project execution facilities. It is also recognized that if scheduling is efficient and automated, huge benefits could result as existing resource usage can be maximized allowing dramatic increase in number of orders processed at the same time substantially reducing cost of production while ensuring reliability in delivery on the committed date. No wonder scheduling is a hot research topic and the market is flooded with scheduling systems of sorts. Still a truly efficient and automatic scheduling system remains an elusive dream as scheduling, even for the most elementary manufacturing setup, is considered difficult. Real life manufacturing setups are complex both in terms of number of orders being handled and diversity of work flows and equipment required to execute them. Even if one manages to create a schedule it soon goes out of sync with what actually gets executed on the shop floor. Time required to recreate a new “schedule” taking into consideration current situation itself is enough cause to ever keep it out of sync with reality.

Manufacturing or project execution is a dynamic process. In order to handle a dynamic process, we need a real-time system that automatically reschedules itself in accordance with what is happening on the shop floor at the speed at which things change.

Imagine a scenario where every operator or work center is informed what to do now. The person concerned then starts executing the task in-hand and notifies in real-time its completion. Within minutes the concerned operator or work center gets to know “what to do next”. This cycle of allotting tasks and seeking feedback from the shop floor goes on for each work center / operator 24x7. In order to make this possible, we must have at the core a fully automatic scheduling engine that takes into account every conceivable constraint and restriction of the factory at a micro-level and in real-time before deciding to allot individual tasks to individual work centers. As if a real super-human Scheduler is managing the show.

We have created and perfected such a scheduling engine. It works 24x7 proactively controlling all factory work centres at a micro-level. It decides what tasks of which orders can and should be actually allotted for execution to the shop floor. Complete information of allotted tasks flows to the concerned work centre in real-time. Operators start execution of allotted tasks while notifying interim milestones achieved until it is over. All notifications flow back in real-time to the scheduling engine to be taken cognizance of during the next reschedule. This cycle of allotting tasks, getting feedback notifications, and subsequent fresh allotment on each work centre on the shop floor goes on endlessly, allowing even the most complex manufacturing setups to run without human “scheduling” intervention – a true computer controlled manufacturing scenario.

MANAGING A FACTORY IS A CIRCUS

AS EACH IMPORTANT ACTIVITY IS AN ISLAND. PEOPLE HAVE TRIED AUTOMATION WITHIN ISLANDS. HOWEVER, CO-ORDINATION BETWEEN THESE ISLANDS STILL MUST BE DONE MANUALLY.

ESTIMATINGPRICE

TO QUOTE

CUSTOMER

GETTINGCUSTOMER

INPUTS

ACTUALDELIVERY

ESTIMATING WHEN A NEW JOB WILL

BE COMPLETED GIVEN EXISTING LOADING

ACTUAL JOBEXECUTION ONSHOP FLOOR

PROCURINGRAW MATERIAL

ACTUAL PRODUCTION PLANNING

OF A JOB WHENAN ORDER

MATURES

ACTUALJOB

COSTING

ANY SOLUTION ?Experts say, we have to live with this problem as it is impossible to integrate these islands of activities.

It is too complex and dynamic a problem for automation.

CONSOLING THOUGHT: When all are equally inconvenienced,

the inconvenience should not be considered to be a handicap.

WE WISH TO MAKE A MODEST CLAIMIt is not just possible to automate and integrate these islands of activities

but do so in real-time with Talika PMS: one solution to integrate the entire manufacturing process end-to-end.

Most manufacturing or project setups typically deal with high mix low volume orders that need to be handled using shared and limited resources. New jobs keep coming in whereas predicted completion dates of current jobs must be regularly monitored to ensure we honor commitments already made notwithstanding occurrence of disruptions like breakdowns, delays, holidays and host of other unexpected and uncontrollable events. Talika PMS is the only dynamic real-time system that tells you when each order in-hand would be completed no matter what is the situation now.

WHAT MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES NEED TODAY?

At the core of any manufacturing or project setup is the day-to-day scheduling and execution of jobs/projects. Material & resource management, financial accounting are actually peripheral activities

emanating from and driven by these core scheduling decisions. ERP systems seldom address the scheduling core, instead tackle the peripheral activities. Talika PMS is indeed a true scheduling centric ERP system.

2. Cut cost of production drastically. The cost of coordinating order execution is comparable or may be even more than the actual cost of performing all tasks comprising the order.

We provide a solution that-• Automaticallycoordinatesandmanagesorder

execution through the shop floor in real time 24x7 unhindered.

1. Increase throughput from existing resources. An order is an abstraction. What we actually execute are individual tasks or activities to accomplish the order. If one really decides to list them individually, then even a simple order can have several elemental tasks. The more orders we deal with, higher is the number of individual tasks involved making things immediately very complex? It would be a painstaking endeavour to create an efficient schedule in the first place and well impossible to re-schedule all activities all over again to conform to changed situation in real-time.

We provide a solution that –• Enablesonetoquicklybreakdownanorderinformof

individual activities;• Thissamerepresentationisusedtoestimatethecost,wastage

and host of other details about the order;• Alsothesamerepresentationisusedsubsequentlybythe

scheduling engine to schedule / reschedule the job with an emphasis on maximizing resource utilization until it is over.

Do business: The Whole Nine Yards. One can do so if one can –

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Reduce Cost

3. Quickly know when new orders can be delivered without disturbing existing commitments.Any business is an on-going concern – existing orders get completed and new ones keep coming in. We mustalwaysbeinapositiontoquicklycommitwhena new order can be delivered given the existing load in-hand without disturbing any existing commitments.

We provide a solution where –• Onecandirectlyaddneworderstoexistingorder

load and get to know delivery dates or perform an extensive what-if analysis to see how best to accommodate the new order.

4. Always ensure 100% on-time deliveries.If it is possible to predict when each order in hand would be completed given the existing conditions in real-time, then it is rather a matter of simply monitoring completion dates vis-à-vis commitment dates.

We provide a solution that -

• Enablesfullfutureschedulevisibilityacrossallorders until each order in-hand is not completed. The prediction is automatically revised as conditions change in real-time.

JSW for job definitionStarting point of our system is the job definition done in the JOb STudy WIzARd (JSW) that defines any job / project as a Component Task (CT) diagram. It is an easy to understand complete representation of the workflow or recipe of accomplishing a job or project and maps exactly to what needs to be done: What-you-See-Is-What-you-do.

• Calculationofwastages,costandtask-wisetimerequiredfordoingthejobispartofthisrepresentation.• Soisestimationoffinalproductcostincludingcostofwork-in-progressaswellasgenerationofaBillofmaterial.

One can even create an input time-table showing how much each input could be delayed without affecting delivery dates.

• Specifyexecutionpreferencesfortheschedulingenginetofollow.

JSW for monitoring and controlling job executionJSW has several real-time views of the shop-floor including a Gantt chart. One can view what’s going on each work centre, see job status or just run a slide show to see current status of what is happening on the shop floor. One can also change execution preferences of one or more activities of any job already scheduled.

Manage the 3W’s automaticallyIf one asks aquestion “whatdoes itmean tomanage anyshop floor or project execution on a day-to-day basis?” An answer in simple terms would be deciding the 3W’s - What to do, When to do, Where to do so that all jobs / projects in-hand are completed as soon as possible while simultaneously optimizing production cost. 3W decisions are the basis for everything? Future plans, material planning, dispatch planning andfinancialaccountingallemanatefromhere.Itisthe“heartof the matter” and it is this heart that is completely handled by the scheduling engine.

Extensive what-if analysis (Simulator)

A defined job can also be simulated to know when it would be completed taking into consideration the current load in real-time NOW on the shop floor. It is here that execution preferences play a major role. For example, one may run one or more of all activities of a job on a holiday. Set your preferences and re-simulate to know its impact on the delivery dates of all jobs already in-hand and new ones added in. One can even group different kinds of permutations of execution preferences on the same job or a set of its activities.

Simulation is not limited to adding or removing jobs alone. One can even play with work center and their availability: drop or add holidays, change work center efficiencies, duplicate or remove them and do a lot more. Imagine any scenario and it can be simulated. Possibilities are endless.

TALIKAPMSWe schedule you relax

support@etalika.in

+91-9818699936 +91-9711879999

For further details please contact:

www.etalika.in