Exploring How Printing Enterprises Can Implement Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS)

　　With the continued development and increasing maturity of the printing and packaging industry in China, as well as the arrival of the post-pandemic era, competition among printing and packaging enterprises has become even more intense. Rising business costs, price pressure from upstream clients, and increasing environmental costs are continually squeezing profit margins for packaging companies. Currently, printing and packaging enterprises are facing significant survival pressure. After years of explosive growth, China’s printing and packaging industry is entering a phase of industry consolidation under fierce competition, with "survival of the fittest" becoming the theme of this stage. The improvement of management levels will be the key for Chinese printing and packaging enterprises to survive in this intense competition. As typical manufacturing enterprises, production management will be of utmost importance.

For material and capacity planning and detailed work scheduling on the production floor, printing and packaging companies often adopt an order acceptance policy and rough capacity estimation scheduling due to their inability to accurately grasp the actual production capacity and material procurement schedule. This results in a situation where production departments must frequently use overtime or outsourcing to meet order delivery deadlines while still aiming to improve customer service levels and delivery commitments. Furthermore, because material planning does not consider capacity constraints, it may lead to raw material procurement plans that cannot align with production schedules, causing disruptions in the established production progress, which results in the inability to meet customer deadlines or leads to excessively high costs, thus creating a vicious cycle. As a result, companies are unable to respond quickly to customer demands or establish effective, profitable allowable order quantities and delivery dates.

To solve these issues, a production strategy that can effectively and properly plan company resources (such as people, machines, materials, methods, and environments) to meet customer needs, achieve maximum output, highest bottleneck resource utilization, and shortest lead times is urgently needed. This system should also assist production managers in finding feasible and practical production plans. However, while ERP systems focus on financial management and supply chain coordination, they often neglect the management of specific production processes. When creating production schedules, ERP systems do not account for the limited production capacity of resources, which leads to ineffective scheduling. The Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) system can make scheduling calculations more precise and solve the production scheduling problems that ERP cannot address. Unfortunately, many domestic software companies currently lack the ability to develop APS systems with these functional requirements. Only some international platform-based SaaS software companies, such as the Sistrade software from Europe (a highly intelligent and integrated digital management software specialized for the printing and packaging industry), have the capacity to offer such solutions. This software entered the Chinese market at the end of the previous year and is currently being implemented and practiced by Shenzhen Jinjia Group.

This article will compare and analyze the characteristics of traditional scheduling methods, ERP system scheduling methods, and APS advanced scheduling methods, hoping to provide useful reference for packaging enterprises considering implementing APS automatic scheduling systems.

　　

1. Traditional Scheduling Methods

Printing and packaging companies typically use traditional scheduling, where production schedulers create production schedules using software like Microsoft Excel. However, this approach has several disadvantages:

1. High Dependence on Human Factors and Uncertainty
   Production schedulers spend a significant amount of time analyzing customer orders (including previously scheduled orders), calculating whether the orders can be completed within the required time frame. If not, feedback is provided to the customer department for negotiation with customers. If the orders can be completed, the most suitable production line and the optimal production time are chosen. However, this requires the scheduler to have at least one year of experience to understand the production process and details. Therefore, traditional scheduling relies heavily on the scheduler’s competence, resulting in uncertainty and inefficiency.

2. Unable to Adjust Quickly to Emergencies
   When there are changes in customer orders, equipment failures, or insufficient raw material supply, the production scheduler has to update the schedule. Even if only one production line is changed, all the products on that line must be rescheduled. If production lines are interchangeable, the situation becomes more complicated, and manual adjustments cannot be made quickly. This requires computer-based solutions.

3. Delayed Information Feedback, Affecting Product Completion
   Scheduling relies on real-time data about equipment, raw materials, and other factors, but these variables constantly change, and the scheduler cannot always stay updated. As a result, the schedules may not fully reflect the actual situation, and in cases of high order volumes, delays in manual information transfer can lead to missed deadlines and wasted capacity.

2. ERP System Scheduling Methods

Many printing and packaging companies have adopted ERP systems to overcome the problems of traditional scheduling, such as inventory backlog or delayed product deliveries. However, ERP-based scheduling also has its limitations:

1. Unrealistic Assumptions of Infinite Production Capacity
   ERP systems typically create schedules assuming unlimited production capacity, which does not align with the real-world limitations of a production line.

2. Dependence on Paper Orders and Manual Data Entry
   Even with an ERP system, production schedulers often rely on paper orders, and information feedback from the production floor is still manually collected and entered into the system, leading to delays and inefficiencies.

3. Difficulty Adjusting to Unexpected Factors
   ERP systems do not allow for quick adjustments in the event of uncertainties, such as equipment malfunctions, urgent order insertions, or employee absences.

4. Rigid Scheduling Once Plans Are Set
   Once a production plan is established, it must be followed, without the flexibility to dynamically adjust for real-time feedback or process interdependencies, resulting in unbalanced throughput, excess inventory, and misalignment between demand and production.

5. Lack of Real-Time Control and Feedback
   ERP systems do not provide real-time updates, which reduces the reliability of decision-making based on outdated or incomplete information.

6. Limited Support for Supply Chain Coordination
   While ERP systems optimize internal resources, they often fail to support the broader supply chain planning needs, limiting the ability to create accurate and feasible production plans.

Example: A printing company using an ERP system for scheduling may receive alerts if a production order is delayed, which can help avoid some delays. However, ERP still faces limitations in automating the production scheduling process, timely production feedback, and adjusting to uncertainties.

3. APS Principles

The core of APS is the synchronized, real-time simulation of all resources (including materials, machines, labor, suppliers, customer demand, transportation, etc.), with constraints taken into account, to generate an optimized production schedule. Whether long-term or short-term plans, APS ensures the schedules are optimized and executable.

APS considers constraints throughout the entire supply chain, such as capacity, material availability, demand, transportation, and financial limitations. Each time a change occurs, such as the addition of a new order, APS checks these constraints to ensure the supply chain plan is always valid.

APS can also utilize genetic algorithms to find the “optimal” solution, mimicking biological evolution to identify the best possible outcomes.

APS enables real-time data collection from the entire production process, from raw materials to finished goods, creating real-time production schedules and supervising and controlling the production process. By automating the management and scheduling of resources such as materials, warehouses, equipment, labor, quality, processes, and exceptions, APS allows printing and packaging companies to operate production management in a way that fully utilizes available resources and improves efficiency.

　　

                                                                                           Fig. 1 Principle of operation of APS

　　Difference and connection between APS and ERP (as in Figure 2)

　　Figure 2 Differences and links between APS and ERP

　　Difference between APS and ERP

Differences Between ERP Production Management and APS

There are two main differences between production management in ERP systems and APS systems:

1. Resource Constraints in ERP vs APS
   Traditional ERP systems are based on infinite resource constraints, whereas APS operates on the principle of limited resource constraints. ERP systems lack the capacity to handle material constraints and cannot achieve precise scheduling or optimization, nor can they cope with rapid changes. ERP scheduling is typically designed for mass production environments, focused on a seller’s market and led by manufacturing enterprises. On the other hand, APS is designed for small-batch, multi-product, fast-paced production environments, with a customer-centric approach and a buyer’s market mindset. This makes APS particularly well-suited for the current state of the packaging industry, where orders are small, products are diverse, and delivery times are short.

2. Scope of Scheduling: Single Manufacturer vs Entire Supply Chain
   Traditional ERP systems focus their scheduling efforts on one part of the supply chain—manufacturers. In contrast, APS is primarily used for integrated supply chain planning (suppliers, manufacturers, and customers), focusing on a global, end-to-end perspective. APS can also integrate with ERP systems to optimize the planning process for individual companies.

The Relationship Between APS and ERP

APS is not a completely new enterprise management model outside of ERP but rather an enhancement and development of ERP. From a historical development perspective, the traditional ERP planning model existed first, followed by the APS model. For individual manufacturing enterprises, users should first ensure they are fully utilizing ERP systems, including accurate static data such as supplier information, customer details, material codes, BOM data, and process documentation. The dynamic business data should also be accurate—ideally 100%—and the three key orders (sales orders, production orders, and purchase orders) must be integrated for better management. Once these data are accurate and integrated, implementing APS becomes a logical next step. This is because the cornerstone of APS operation is based on these data.

Why Printing and Packaging Enterprises Need APS

With the rapid development of society, consumer demand has quickly shifted toward personalized consumption. Products such as phones, computers, and cars are increasingly driven by the desire for customization and uniqueness, which has directly affected the printing and packaging industry, making it shift from mass production orders to small batch, multi-variety, fast-paced discrete orders.

Existing ERP systems cannot consider all production constraints globally, and they cannot automatically and quickly generate reasonable production schedules. Instead, they rely on manual scheduling, making it difficult to meet the “fast, short, and few” demands of actual production and to meet promised delivery deadlines. Improper production scheduling leads to wasted resources, reduced production efficiency, internal competition for production resources, and delays in delivery. Based on user complaints in recent years, the proportion of complaints about product delivery delays has been steadily increasing. Delivery delays severely disrupt customer production plans, damage company reputation, and reduce competitiveness. Product delivery time has become the primary factor in customers choosing and evaluating suppliers.

APS solves the dynamic process management issues that ERP cannot address. APS provides an optimized plan based on limited resource capabilities, considering the real production conditions of enterprise resource capacities, time, products, constraints, and logical relationships. The advantages of APS are as follows:

1. Quick and Accurate Delivery Forecasting: APS can quickly calculate the delivery date based on the current production plan, customer requirements, and production bottleneck capacity by prioritizing orders and taking production configurations and procurement into account.

2. Fully Automated Scheduling: APS automatically optimizes the production schedule based on the product’s process attributes, equipment capabilities, and current production progress, generating the optimal production plan to meet order requirements. This includes calculating the latest or earliest possible start and finish times for each order, with corresponding material requirements planning.

3. Real-time Adjustments for New or Changed Orders: When a new order or a change in an existing order occurs, APS can instantly calculate the impact on other orders and adjust the production plan accordingly. It provides real-time updates on the new possible delivery dates, as well as the time difference between the original and new deadlines.

4. Automatic Statistics and Alerts for Urgent Orders: APS automatically tracks and alerts personnel about urgent orders, unfinished production orders, and process tasks that need special attention.

5. Refined Workshop Scheduling: APS provides detailed scheduling information for each production line and machine, specifying when to process which production order, the quantity to produce, the mold to use, and the required materials and quantities.

6. Automatic Capacity and Resource Load Calculation: APS calculates capacity loads and balances resource allocation, generating an accurate resource usage plan for each order and real-time material requirements. It minimizes inventory while ensuring production needs are met, thus freeing up working capital.

In conclusion, APS will become a crucial tool for printing and packaging enterprises to improve production management levels and achieve lean manufacturing. Given the short delivery times, variety of products, and small order volumes in the printing and packaging industry, APS can significantly enhance production management, reduce lead times, and improve competitiveness, helping companies stand out in the competitive landscape.

How Packaging Enterprises Can Introduce APS

Introducing APS is not just about installing software; it represents a fundamental transformation of the company's management processes. Many large and medium-sized printing and packaging enterprises in China have experience in implementing ERP systems. They can leverage their expertise in ERP to hire professional software consulting companies to develop APS-related functionalities or directly adopt mature global APS products, such as the Sistrade software mentioned earlier. Whether developing APS based on existing ERP systems or directly introducing a mature APS solution, it is essential to train relevant employees and, if necessary, involve them in the APS development process to ensure the system fits the company’s actual needs and minimizes implementation resistance.

Conclusion

To improve production planning and management in the printing and packaging industry, and to move away from the passive scheduling approach that most companies currently rely on, businesses must implement proactive and refined advanced scheduling management. APS enables production planners to focus on key tasks and smoothly handle bottlenecks and issues in the production process, ensuring on-time deliveries. With APS, printing and packaging companies can improve on-time delivery rates, reduce inventory, and enhance capacity utilization. Enterprises that adopt APS early will be able to shorten order delivery times and stand out in the highly competitive industry.