s.FOX

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You want to organ­ise your pro­duc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing plan­ning as effi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble to ensure a suc­cess­ful long-term busi­ness per­for­mance? Do you want to bring your pro­duc­tion orders into an opti­mal order to ensure bet­ter capac­i­ty util­i­sa­tion of your plants? Lit­tle Fun­Fact: The pro­duc­tion of just 10 prod­ucts results in 3.6 mil­lion pos­si­ble orders. Add in sup­ply bot­tle­necks, short-term loss of pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty, increas­ing deliv­ery pres­sure and unplanned staff short­ages and you can eas­i­ly lose track of things.

Want to get rid of your plan­ning and sched­ul­ing headaches? Stop wast­ing time man­u­al­ly updat­ing Excel spread­sheets and start using our intel­li­gent pro­duc­tion plan­ning soft­ware s.FOX.

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Graph
The chal­lenge

EFFICIENT PRODUCTION PLANNING WITH AI

For man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies today, cre­at­ing an effi­cient pro­duc­tion plan and deter­min­ing the opti­mal sequence of pro­duc­tion orders is more of a chal­lenge than ever before. It requires a lot of time, excel­lent man­age­ment and a great deal of expe­ri­ence. Cre­at­ing effi­cient pro­duc­tion plans in Excel has become vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble today, but is still done by many organ­i­sa­tions. Not only is this exer­cise time-con­sum­ing but it also takes up a lot of man­pow­er!

The ever-increas­ing vari­ety of prod­ucts and options increas­es the com­plex­i­ty of the entire pro­duc­tion process. Added to this are fac­tors such as dis­trib­uted man­u­fac­tur­ing across mul­ti­ple loca­tions, sud­den influ­ences such as mate­r­i­al short­ages or rush orders and grow­ing cost pres­sure in pro­duc­tion. Against this back­ground, an effi­cient pro­duc­tion plan­ning and sched­ul­ing process that con­sid­ers the many com­plex inter­de­pen­den­cies has become more crit­i­cal than ever. Intel­li­gent data ana­lyt­ics based on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine learn­ing can help you mas­ter the increas­ing amount and com­plex­i­ty of data and ensure your company’s long-term com­pet­i­tive­ness and eco­nom­ic suc­cess.

Spurensucher kommen aus dem Datenwald.

Our software solution s.FOX

Our pro­duc­tion plan­ning solu­tion s.FOX has been specif­i­cal­ly designed to mas­ter the com­plex­i­ty of the mod­ern man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try using data sci­ence. Our holis­tic approach and meth­ods help our cus­tomers opti­mise their pro­duc­tion process­es, reduce costs and increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

 

s.FOX ensures intel­li­gent sequenc­ing of jobs and pro­duc­tion orders and uses arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to sup­port com­plex pro­duc­tion plan­ning and sched­ul­ing. What used to take hours of man­u­al plan­ning in spread­sheets is now done with­in in min­utes. The soft­ware can be used across var­i­ous indus­tries and guar­an­tees reli­able plan­ning of com­plex Indus­try 4.0 process­es even in the long term. This per­mits a more effi­cient cost reduc­tion, opti­mal use of resources and improved com­pet­i­tive­ness. As a real alter­na­tive to man­u­al pro­duc­tion plan­ning, s.FOX helps you as a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny to face the future with con­fi­dence.

s.FOx auf einem Bildschirm im Wald
s.core

the algorithm library of s.FOX

Using data sci­ence, rel­e­vant influ­enc­ing vari­ables called con­straints are iden­ti­fied from data sources such as his­tor­i­cal pro­duc­tion data and mas­ter data. But they are also iden­ti­fied in direct dia­logue with plan­ners. What’s unique is the com­bi­na­tion of AI-based esti­ma­tors for order-spe­cif­ic process para­me­ters — also called ‘fea­ture impor­tance’ (e.g. set­up times) — and pow­er­ful opti­mis­ers to take into account indi­vid­ual con­di­tions — the ‘con­straint sat­is­fac­tion prob­lem’ (e.g. mate­r­i­al or plant avail­abil­i­ty). This is how we have suc­cess­ful­ly linked machine learn­ing with pow­er­ful opti­mi­sa­tion algo­rithms. The com­bi­na­tion of AI and these very algo­rithms opens up new pos­si­bil­i­ties for automa­tion and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of pro­duc­tion process­es.

Almost the same, but dif­fer­ent

The difference between s.FOX and FOX

These two soft­ware solu­tions with almost the same name only dif­fer in the abil­i­ty to cre­ate intel­li­gent pro­duc­tion plan­ning with or with­out SAP:

s.FOX

(stand­alone. Facto­ry Opti­miza­tion EXcel­lence):

“Stand­alone” empha­sizes the unique sell­ing point of intel­li­gent pro­duc­tion process plan­ning out­side or with­out an SAP con­nec­tion. In short: s.FOX is for all cus­tomers who want to work with an indi­vid­ual con­nec­tion to oth­er ERP sys­tems or as an intro­duc­tion to the GIB suite and is avail­able via ifm stat­math gmbh.

FOX

(Facto­ry Opti­miza­tion EXcel­lence):


Intel­li­gent pro­duc­tion process plan­ning in SAP and avail­able via ifm busi­ness solu­tions.

More Infor­ma­tion

FACTORS AND DEPENDENCIES IN PRODUCTION PLANNING

s.FOX takes into account var­i­ous fac­tors and depen­den­cies in pro­duc­tion plan­ning:

1 mate­r­i­al pro­cure­ment, mate­r­i­al avail­abil­i­ty and deliv­ery times
2 machine capa­bil­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty
3 pro­duc­tion steps and set­up times
4 order data
5 work plans
6 order pri­or­i­sa­tion
7 machine main­te­nance and planned main­te­nance inter­vals
8 shift schedules/staff avail­abil­i­ty
9 fur­ther cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic restric­tions
At a glance

THE BENEFITS OF s.FOX

1 opti­mal order plan­ning, e.g. to ensure eco­nom­ic util­i­sa­tion of pro­duc­tion lines, improve­ment of deliv­ery per­for­mance and min­imi­sa­tion of set­up times
2 pri­ori­tise orders with max­i­mum flex­i­bil­i­ty
3 for­ward and back­ward sched­ul­ing pos­si­ble
4 assess the influ­ence of rush orders
5 cre­ate pro­duc­tion plans for mul­ti­ple loca­tions with dif­fer­ent IT infra­struc­tures
6 sim­ple plan­ning export
7 easy man­age­ment of inter­faces to third-par­ty sys­tems
8 flex­i­ble, intu­itive and clear­ly struc­tured web appli­ca­tion
9 high trans­paren­cy and trace­abil­i­ty
10 sim­ple soft­ware imple­men­ta­tion
11 con­sis­tent qual­i­ty lev­el of plan­ning (even if plan­ner is absent)

5‑step wizard

The sim­ple 5‑step wiz­ard ensures intu­itive use and clear visu­al­i­sa­tion:

Ausschnitt von Füßen mit Wanderschuhen, die durch die Natur laufen.

STEP 1:

In the first step, select a suit­able sched­ul­ing strat­e­gy from the drop-down menu which reflects the desired plan­ning peri­od as well as your indi­vid­ual pro­duc­tion process para­me­ters.

 

STEP 2:

In the sec­ond step, select the machines for which you want to cre­ate a plan.

 

STEP 3:

In the third step, select the orders to be planned.

 

STEP 4:

In the fourth step, an opti­mal plan is pre­sent­ed in an easy-to-fol­low Gantt chart. Colours, tooltips and key fig­ures can be con­fig­ured indi­vid­u­al­ly.

 

STEP 5:

In the final step, your cus­tom plan is trans­ferred to your sys­tem (e.g. ERP or PPS).

Your con­tact to ifm stat­math
DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS?
Do you have ques­tions about our prod­ucts? Con­tact us to book an appoint­ment. Our team will be hap­py to advise you per­son­al­ly or via email.
49 (0)271 – 319 28 00 1 statmath@ifm.com
statmath Mitarbeiter Daniel
How it works

s.FOX IN A NUTSHELL

DATA:

 

  • order data
  • pro­duc­tion data
  • shift sched­ules
  • mate­r­i­al avail­abli­ty
  • rela­tion­ship data
  • work plans
  • pro­duc­tion process
  • ERP data (e.g. SAP)

OUR SOLUTION FOR COMPLEX PRODUCTION PLANNING:

  • pro­duc­tion plan­ning with­in min­utes, in near real-time and for mul­ti­ple loca­tions with dif­fer­ent infra­struc­tures
  • opti­mal clus­ter­ing of orders to ensure eco­nom­ic util­i­sa­tion of pro­duc­tion lines
  • flex­i­ble pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of orders
  • ad hoc resched­ul­ing pos­si­ble
  • mea­sure­ment of cru­cial KPIs such as set­up times etc.
  • sce­nario sim­u­la­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties

RESULT:

 

  • intel­li­gent and reli­able pro­duc­tion plan­ning
  • ready-made solu­tion and user-defined pro­gram­ming inter­face (API) for export to oth­er sys­tems, includ­ing SAP
  • con­sis­tent qual­i­ty lev­el of plan­ning (even if plan­ner is absent)
Markus-Steiert
“Our pro­duc­tion plan­ning, which used to take 7 hours per day, is now done with­in 5 to 10 min­utes thanks to s.FOX. Besides the much short­er plan­ning peri­od, pro­duc­tion times have also improved thanks to the opti­mised plan­ning process.”
Senior Man­ag­er Pro­duc­tion Equip­ment Tech­nol­o­gy, ifm elec­tron­ic gmbh
Dipl.-Ing. Markus Steiert
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