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Major European Chemical Producer Implements Planning and Scheduling Software for Elastomers and Styrenics
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
- Functional Applications - Inventory Management Systems
Applicable Industries
- Chemicals
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Procurement
Use Cases
- Demand Planning & Forecasting
- Inventory Management
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
The company initiated a production planning and scheduling project as part of a major initiative focused on process re-engineering and automation. The overall goal of the production planning and scheduling project was to support several business initiatives. These included replacing the manual scheduling process, improving customer service, optimizing raw material and finished products inventories, reducing costs associated with off-specification quality, campaign transitions, packaging, and logistics and distribution, sharing information and improving cooperation between marketing/sales and production planning functions, and integrating planning and scheduling with the ERP system.
About The Customer
The customer is a major European petrochemical leader that manages four business divisions—Styrenics, Elastomers, Polyethylene, and Basic Chemicals. The company coordinates the production and sales of their whole portfolio of products and brands. It has over 77,000 employees in more than 77 countries across the world. The company initiated a production planning and scheduling project as part of a major initiative focused on process re-engineering and automation.
The Solution
After evaluating several vendors, AspenTech’s aspenONE Supply Chain Management solution was chosen for production planning and scheduling. AspenTech was selected based on its software’s built-in scheduling and task sequencing capabilities, its user-friendly interface, and the ease with which it could be configured to address this customer’s specific business process requirements. The planning models are used for multi-site batch and continuous production planning over a rolling three-month horizon. Production and distribution groups, located at the company’s headquarters, develop plans based primarily upon sales forecast data. The scheduling models, which include detailed production parameters and constraints for each plant, are then used by plant planners to generate a multi-week production schedule with day-by-day detail.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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