Volume & mix
Tonnage by grade family, dimension band and plant. Agreed in S&OP, and then held to — with variance tracked rather than quietly forgotten.
Home / Planning
One order book. Several plants. One plan they all believe.
Demand planning, multi-plant capacity planning and production planning built on the same material and route model the schedulers use — so the plan and the schedule are never arguing about different data.
Demand, capacity and production plan on one horizon
01
Demand Planning
Forecast, firm order intake and contract call-offs on a single horizon — with the netting rules that stop a contract being counted twice.
Metals demand is rarely a clean forecast. It is a mix of annual contracts with monthly call-offs, spot business that arrives late and demands early, and a sales team with a view about next quarter. The planning layer has to hold all three without double-counting, and has to be honest about which part of the number is actually committed.
- Contract and call-off management with consumption tracked against the frame
- Forecast netting — firm orders consume forecast rather than adding to it
- Product family aggregation — plan at grade family and dimension band, not at item level
- Statistical baseline plus overrides, with the override author and reason recorded
- Rolling horizon — weekly buckets near term, monthly further out
Questions it should answer in one screen
How much of next quarter is real?
Committed versus forecast, split by contract and spot.
Where is demand outrunning capacity?
By grade family and by plant, before sales promises it.
Which contracts are behind on call-off?
So the conversation happens in month two, not month eleven.
Allocation across plants, with the re-route priced
02
Multi-Plant Capacity Planning
Most metals groups run several plants that quietly compete for the same order book. Allocation usually happens in a spreadsheet owned by one person. We make it explicit.
Two plants can both make a grade, but not at the same cost, not on the same lead time and not with the same yield. Capacity planning has to weigh all three, plus transit, plus what is already loaded — and then show its work, because someone will challenge the answer.
- Route-aware capacity — modelled per unit, not as a single tonnage per plant
- Bottleneck identification across the whole route, week by week
- Alternative route comparison with cost, yield and lead-time consequences shown
- Maintenance and outage calendars as first-class capacity reductions
- Transit and inter-plant movement included, so the "cheaper" plant is honestly cheaper
03
Production Planning
The layer that turns an allocated plan into something a scheduler can actually execute — monthly, then weekly, then handed over cleanly.
Campaign shaping
Group the month into campaigns the units can actually run: cast sequences, rolling programmes, coating blocks, colour runs.
To the schedulers
Released as a constrained work list, not a wish. The scheduler sequences inside it and reports back when it cannot.
Why it is joined to the MES
A planning tool that does not know what is physically in the yard will keep planning production you do not need. Because our planning layer sits on the same material model as DigiPlantMES, available stock, work in progress and actual yields feed the plan continuously.
That closes the loop most implementations leave open: the plan learns that a route yields 91% and not the 94% in the master data, and next month's plan is right for the first time.
Yield feedback
Actual route yields replace master-data assumptions, per grade and per unit.
WIP and stock netting
Planned production nets against what is already made and sitting in the yard.
Order promising
Available-to-promise that reflects real route capacity rather than an offset in days.
04
Scenarios and re-planning
Plans are wrong the moment a caster trips. What matters is how quickly you can build a defensible alternative and see what it costs.
Outage
Take a unit down for four days and see the whole horizon re-flow, with the orders that become late listed by customer.
Order surge
Test a large enquiry against real capacity before sales commits a date to it.
Route switch
Move volume between plants and see cost, transit and lead-time consequences side by side.
Campaign change
Longer campaigns for efficiency versus shorter ones for service — priced, not argued.
Scenarios are saved, compared and auditable
Every scenario keeps its assumptions. When someone asks in November why the October decision was made, the answer is a record rather than a recollection.
Design Partner Program · open
Start with the plan, or start with the plant.
Planning and execution are one product with two entry points. Some customers start with multi-plant allocation; others start with tracking on a single line. Both work.