APS SOFTWARE
Increase Your Factory Output with Asprova APS.
Asprova APS offers seamless sequencing based on finite capacities. Automatically synchronize your entire production and logistics processes with Asprova’s orchestration scheduling system.
Predict Precise Delivery Dates
- Scheduling with Asprova lets you quickly provide reliable delivery times for customer inquiries. Only comprehensive, end-to-end scheduling allows for accurate delivery commitments.
- The Asprova APS system calculates dependable delivery dates for every customer order in seconds.
- Reliable ATP and CTP: Asprova APS accounts for all material demands and supplies months in advance.
On-Time Delivery – Keep Your Promises!
- React flexibly to changing conditions. With the Asprova APS system, you’ll always have the right solution to disruptions.
- Asprova APS accounts for the continuous changes in your capacities and demands. Stabilize your scheduling with precise capacity and material reservations, as well as buffers.
- Always stay on top of order progress—from initial scheduling and release to the final production feedback.
Your Benefits with Asprova’s APS System
The APS system must ensure optimal, realistic, and feasible production scheduling across your entire value chain.
Advanced Planning and Scheduling with Asprova offers key advantages for your manufacturing:
- Quickly calculate realistic delivery dates.
- Schedule complex order networks and create optimal sequences for all resources.
- Reduce production lead times through process synchronization.
- Increase resource productivity and, as a result, boost factory output.
- Reduce raw material, semi-finished, and finished goods inventory.
- Enhance shop floor transparency, ensuring every employee knows exactly what’s happening, when it’s happening, and where.
- Quickly adjust production schedules in response to unexpected events.
- Drastically reduce the effort required for production scheduling and control.
Asprova’s Comprehensive Scheduling: The Key to Complete Process Oversight
Optimization
Perfect Synchronization of Your Processes
- Achieve the shortest possible lead times with seamless synchronization across all processes. Asprova APS cuts out unnecessary waiting times.
- Orchestrating end-to-end scheduling ensures optimal sequencing for every resource.
- Whether sequential, parallel, converging, or branching, Asprova schedules the perfect timing to sync all processes.
- Boost your business potential with faster and more reliable delivery times.
Increase Productivity
- Produce only what you need, exactly when you need it—without excess inventory and with minimal waste.
- Minimize setup times using the smart sorting and grouping functions of the APS software.
- Asprova APS boosts the productivity of bottleneck resources.
The Right Parts on Hand, Every Time
- Avoid shortages The key difference with Asprova’s production scheduling software is that it not only incorporates traditional MRP II but enhances it by calculating material requirements using finite capacity scheduling.
- Schedule reliable production start times based on actual material availability.
- Improve your cash flow with Asprova APS by significantly reducing inventory levels.
Automatic and Fast!
- Drastically reduce your scheduling effort with Asprova APS, the world’s fastest production scheduling system.
- Define rules for automatic scheduling—simple and transparent.
- Manual adjustments are always an option for handling exceptions, giving you the flexibility to respond to late deliveries or changing priorities.
Perfect Timing for Individual Processes and the Entire Operation: Asprova Has You Covered
Maximum Transparency
Full Visibility in Your Factory—Now and in the Future
- Instantly track your order’s status and monitor production progress.
- Keep an overview of order lead times, including start and end times.
- Enhance overall efficiency across all departments by staying ahead and monitoring status weeks and months in advance.
Visualize Even the Most Complex Order Networks
- The APS software visualizes and links all orders—from sales forecasts and customer orders to procurement and production orders, all the way through to shipping.
- Whether make-to-order (MTO), series production, mass production (MTS), or a combination of these, Asprova APS visualizes every type of production!
Seamless Inventory Oversight
- View your inventory trajectories in charts and not as simple numbers in spreasdsheets.
- Asprova APS provides you with total visibility, ensuring even critical materials are tracked.
- Every schedule change, along with interdependencies like inventory fluctuations, is updated instantly and visualized in charts and tables.
Your Strategic Outlook on Capacity Utilization
- Identify potential bottlenecks weeks or even years in advance and take action today.
- Use the APS system’s bird’s-eye view for strategic decisions. Simulate and compare investments in equipment or detect staffing shortages early.
- Enhance the precision of your operational measures to optimize the utilization of your factory, workforce, and machines.
Achieve Reassuring Clarity with Asprova’s Maximum Transparency
Simulation
Easily Check Feasibility
- Calculate realistic and accurate delivery dates for customer inquiries in seconds.
- Import your sales forecasts into APS software to ensure feasibility.
- Asprova APS simulates quickly and with pinpoint accuracy.
- Asprova’s advanced scheduling software incorporates your bill of materials and work schedules, all based on finite capacities.
Stay Ahead with Predictive Insights
- Many systems focus on past KPIs, but Asprova’s APS software delivers predictive KPIs—looking months or even years ahead.
- Access over 200 KPIs, including delivery accuracy, lead times, and setup ratios, all included in Asprova’s standard package and fully customizable.
- Support management with precise KPIs for products, resources, and customers.
- Easily compare the original schedule against production feedback.
LOOKING AHEAD
Quick Simulations for Efficient Production Scheduling
To meet customer expectations on delivery times and maximize resource productivity, your production scheduling needs to simulate and optimize all types of orders—whether confirmed, unconfirmed, call-off, or stock orders—as well as sales forecasts.
Unexpected events happen every day: supplier delays, employee or machine breakdowns, and last-minute order changes. The APS system must be able to factor these events into simulations and quickly update the production schedule. The benefits of using simulations include:
Feasible Schedules for Today and for Tomorrow: Foresee What’s Ahead with Asprova APS
System Integration
Seamlessly Expand Your System Landscape
Data Exchange
Asprova APS exchanges data bidirectionally with all ERP, MES/BDE systems, and other applications such as MS Excel, etc.
Production Scheduling
Your existing systems retain their core competencies, while we enhance them with Asprova’s powerful scheduling capabilities.
Data Import
Import data at your convenience, not just at preset times. If required, you can amend the data directly in Asprova APS.
Interfaces
Easily adapt the interface in the APS software to updates, new systems, and user requirements.
ASPROVA MODULES
APS vs. MS: What’s the Difference?
All Asprova modules operate on Microsoft Windows.
Asprova APS
Advanced Planning & Scheduling
Building on MS functions, this flagship product unites all elements of production scheduling—from order intake to material procurement—and schedules everything automatically in a single step.
Automatic production scheduling
Consideration of component structure and part quantities
Scheduling based on fixed lead times for each production item
Scheduling that accounts for the factory’s production capacity
Incorporation of shift work into the scheduling process
Scheduling based on order information
Automatic scheduling of material procurement plans
Asprova MS
Manufacturing Scheduler
This module includes all the essential functions for production planning and scheduling. It can be flexibly adapted to various products and processes. By taking into account machine capacity and workforce resources, it is capable of both short-term scheduling and long-term planning.
Automatic production scheduling
Consideration of component structure and part quantities
Scheduling based on fixed lead times for each production item
Scheduling that accounts for the factory’s production capacity
Incorporation of shift work into the scheduling process
Scheduling based on order information
Automatic scheduling of material procurement plans
UNDERSTANDING APS
Choosing the Right APS Software: What You Need to Know
Many companies have faced setbacks—sometimes more than once—when implementing an APS system. How can you avoid this? When choosing a software for Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS), consider these key factors:
Define Implementation Goals:
Restricting scheduling to micro areas of the factory has little impact on the overall outcome. The APS system you choose should have the capability to create end-to-end scheduling, orchestrating the entire enterprise. This means customer orders are scheduled comprehensively, accounting for all process-related connections, from customer orders to shipping, across all levels of the bill of materials. By implementing an APS system, processes across the entire organization can be improved to boost profitability and resilience.
Thus, it’s crucial that implementation goals are clearly defined when selecting an APS system:
- Improve delivery reliability
- Reduce stagnation
- Shorten lead times
- Lower inventory and WIP
- Reduce setup times
- Increase productivity in bottleneck processes
- Boost factory output
- Avoid part shortages
- Reduce effort for scheduling and control through automated scheduling processes
Achieving these goals leads to a reduction in manufacturing costs. An APS system should also provide the flexibility to adjust scheduling logic based on the relevant KPI and objectives, while assessing the results accordingly.
Creating a Digital Twin:
The properties, rules, and restrictions for your products, processes, resources, orders, inventory, customer agreements, scheduling logic, etc., are numerous and diverse. To generate realistic production schedules, it is essential to fully represent your reality within the Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) system through a digital twin. A digital twin is the virtual representation of a real object (factory), process, or system, and forms the foundation for the APS system. If even a few product or process properties, rules, or restrictions are incorrectly represented or cannot be modeled within the APS system, this will dynamically affect the scheduling of all orders and processes—rendering the scheduling results unusable within just a few days.
Custom Adjustments Without Programming
The algorithm of an APS software is highly complex. If significant programming is required, the logical consistency of the settings and scheduling logic may be compromised.
Flexible Adjustments in Scheduling Logic
The properties of products and processes vary greatly among manufacturers, even when producing the same product. Simple scheduling logic, such as backward or forward scheduling or bottleneck-focused scheduling, is not enough to achieve optimal results. In APS software, assignment rules for individual processes, resources, order types, and products must be configurable—without programming. Additionally, the entire scheduling logic must be flexible enough to shorten delivery times and optimize factory performance.
Accurate MRP Calculation
A key factor for short lead times and high delivery reliability is material availability. Material requirements for all items in the BOM span the entire value chain, and knowing the precise timing is critical for on-time delivery. Only a powerful APS system can accurately determine these timings. Traditional MRP calculations from ERP systems often fall short because they don’t dynamically account for factors like capacity, utilization, or backlog.
For true MRP accuracy, an APS system must generate real demand dates. Without this, part shortages and excess inventory are almost guaranteed.
Instant Simulations
Factory operations are subject to constant change. Therefore, running simulations to explore various possibilities is one of the primary tasks of a scheduler. They need to detect capacity and material shortages early and simulate workforce deployment to schedule the best possible scenario. Inventory fluctuations and supplier delays must also be factored in. For this, a powerful APS system is needed—one that delivers results not overnight, but in seconds.
Simulations are crucial for:
- Determining reliable delivery dates
- Detecting expected inventory fluctuations
- Assessing the impact of supplier delays
- Planning investments
- Scheduling workforce deployment
Simulations are essential for schedulers to create realistic short-term schedules and provide management with the necessary information for long-term planning.
The Difference Between APS Software and MES with “APS Module”
MES systems with “APS modules” lack the necessary algorithms and flexibility to create a digital twin and optimize production scheduling. MES/BDE systems only detect and process data from selected processes (historical production results), such as operation start and end times, quantities, quality characteristics, and maintenance information. A simple algorithm is sufficient for this. However, the technology of a digital twin requires complex algorithms to accurately model and simulate the manufacturing process. In fact, many who choose MES with optional “APS functionality” still rely heavily on manual scheduling.
It is impossible to simulate the entire value chain weeks or months in advance, optimize process synchronization, production lead times, delivery reliability, or inventory fluctuations with these systems. To benefit from the full potential of what an APS system can offer, it’s essential to use a “true” APS software.
Optimal Sequencing is Key for Process Synchronization
To achieve this, an APS should be capable of:
- Flexibly adjusting order prioritization rules (dispatching rules) to ensure an optimal sequence of orders.
- Sorting and prioritizing within the APS system’s dispatching rules based on product groups, customers, resource groups, individual resources, processes, order types, and more.
- Evaluating and selecting the optimal resources (machines, fixtures, workers, etc.) using weighted criteria, such as resource priority, minimizing setup/wait/production times, or load levelling.
- Running multiple automatic sorting and optimization cycles that build on each other. For example, the first optimization might focus on delivery dates, followed by product characteristics (size, color, etc.), and finally by packaging size to reduce setup time.
- Optimizing bottlenecks by combining forward and backward scheduling to minimize wait times and significantly shortens overall lead times. As bottleneck processes determine the production throughput, upstream and downstream processes will be scheduled around them.
The Right Partner for Implementing Production Scheduling Software
A powerful APS system will significantly improve your production output by synchronizing production processes. However, an APS system can only partially support the optimization of a factory’s operational standards (standard work, setup procedures, standard times, predefined buffer times/inventory, TQM, TPM, etc.).
AI, digitalization, and cloud systems are popular, but they won’t deliver results beyond the real capabilities of the factory. Therefore, it is advisable to strengthen KAIZEN initiatives (questioning and improving current process flows) when implementing an Advanced Production Scheduling system.
Introducing an APS system presents an ideal opportunity to challenge and improve existing operational processes. These improvements can be directly integrated into the master data of the APS system, optimizing scheduling results accordingly. Thus, the expertise of the implementation partner in providing holistic consulting is a critical factor for the successful implementation of an APS system.
TAILOR-MADE
Who uses Asprova APS?
More than 3,600 customers worldwide are thriving with Asprova’s Advanced Planning and Scheduling System—from global enterprises to small and mid-sized companies. Asprova APS is trusted across various industries, including:
- Aerospace
- Automotive
- Electronics
- Pharmaceuticals and Chemicals
- Food and Beverage
- Plastics Engineering
- Woodworking, Prefabricated Houses, and Furniture Manufacturing
- Metalworking
- Machinery and Plant Engineering
Here’s a brief list showcasing how our software is used across various industries, featuring case studies:
Kontio, the world’s largest log house manufacturer, based in Finland, has been scheduling production with Asprova APS since 2016.
Panasonic Automotive Systems, based in the Czech Republic, produces high-end automotive electronics systems for all European car manufacturers. In a factory with over 3,000 employees, Asprova APS has been scheduling the entire value chain—from SMT assembly to back-end processes—since 2016.
Strauss Café, one of the largest producers of roasted and ground coffee in Poland, has been scheduling production with Asprova APS since 2014. As a result, their OEE improved from less than 50% to over 86%.
Horst Scholz manufactures precision plastic parts for microtechnology, gearing, and medical technology. Asprova’s Advanced Planning and Scheduling System has been scheduling production in two of their divisions: in injection mold production since 2017, and in plastic injection molding with around 90 injection molding machines since 2022.
Since 2018 Asprova software has been scheduling the production of buses and coaches for Solaris Bus & Coach, one of Europe’s leading manufacturers in the industry, with 25 years of experience and more than 20,000 vehicles produced.
Dan-Wood, based in Poland, is one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of turnkey wooden prefabricated houses. Since implementing Asprova APS in 2018, Dan-Wood has been able to expand detailed scheduling across all production processes and work areas—from cutting to pre-assembly, final assembly, and the shipment of their prefabricated houses.
Jabil is a global manufacturing company with over 250,000 employees in 100 locations across 30 countries. They produce a wide range of electronics for commercial customers, including products for healthcare, packaging, smartphones, cloud infrastructure, automotive, and household appliances. Since 2015, Jabil has been using Asprova APS software worldwide to schedule the entire value chain.
Fogel, based in Guatemala, is a major supplier of commercial refrigeration and freezing systems for some of the world’s leading cold beverage manufacturers. They have been using Asprova APS software to schedule their production since 2004.
Bopisa is one of the leading companies in the flexible packaging industry in Mexico. They have been leveraging Asprova software for production scheduling since 2021.
Gebhardt Fördertechnik has been scheduling the production of automated storage systems with Asprova APS since 2016. Asprova software schedules the entire value chain—from mechanical manufacturing, sheet metal processing, welding, galvanizing, and painting to pre-assembly, final assembly, and delivery.
Frequently Asked Questions
1Which Industries Benefit from Asprova’s Production Scheduling Software?
Our APS software for production scheduling is suitable for manufacturing companies across all industries–whether in aerospace, automotive, electronics, woodworking, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, or other industries. Our production scheduling systems are developed in collaboration with leading lean companies from various industries to ensure efficiency improvements in different manufacturing processes.
2What Does Asprova’s Production Scheduling Software Offer?
Asprova’s APS software for production scheduling is an advanced solution designed to plan, schedule, control, digititalize, automate, and optimize processes in the manufacturing industry. Without complex implementation or programming, it allows for precise scheduling of production processes, reducing wait times and reliably lowering manufacturing costs.
3What Specific Features Does Asprova’s Production Scheduling Software Provide?
Asprova’s APS software for production scheduling enables the highest level of process synchronization through optimal sequencing, effective bottleneck management, and setup optimization. It also ensures the shortest possible production lead time by minimizing stagnation between processes. Additionally, you can manage the entire supply chain within a single system.