Software for Production Networks: Optimized Planning Across Departmental and Company Boundaries

Production processes often extend across different departments, locations or even company boundaries. Precise coordination and well thought-out planning are required to ensure that everything runs smoothly. We develop customized software solutions that significantly improve the coordination of such complex production networks – for increased transparency, efficiency and productivity throughout the entire network.

Efficiently Plan and Coordinate Production Networks

Production networks are omnipresent – for example in the pharmaceutical industry: pharmaceutical manufacturers outsource parts of their production to specialized Contract Manufacturing Organizations (CMO). This creates the need to coordinate production quantities, product characteristics and timing across company boundaries – always taking into account capacities, approvals and availability.

Similar requirements arise within larger companies: While individual departments carry out their detailed planning based on local knowledge and restrictions, a higher-level control of material and information flows is required at company level. This is because the isolated optimization of individual production stages does not automatically lead to an optimal overall result. It requires careful coordination of local optimizations and global objectives in order to improve throughput, adherence to schedules, and resource deployment across the entire production network.

Optimize Production Processes in the Network Through Intelligent Orchestration

From a mathematical perspective, many production networks have similar structures – regardless of whether they involve external partners or just internal departments. The central question is always: How can production be coordinated when individual units plan and make decisions independently?

We develop individual concepts and software solutions based on customized models. Depending on the use case and the degree of integration of the players involved, these can turn out very differently.

We

• provide support in collecting the necessary status information.
• develop concepts for planning, coordinating and optimizing processes.
• implement tailor-made software solutions.

We use linear and mixed integer optimization methods, heuristics, and combinatorial optimization concepts. In some situations, we also apply game theory concepts to increase the willingness of participants to cooperate, particularly when separate budgeting is a key reason for the lack of willingness to cooperate and coordinate more effectively.