Optimization. Integrated. At the touch of one button.

Optimization at the touch of one button. Do you think that is hard to believe? Read on. We have built the technology that optimizes every process and work center by efficiently scheduling production orders in your factory from the data you already have available. So your optimization can be done today when you start automating your production planning. Indeed at the touch of a button.

Algorithmic planning

I am talking about an algorithmic approach to production planning. This technology has an academic background and has been called Advanced Planning and Scheduling for over ten years, and was applied mainly in big industries like automotive and worldwide logistics. At Blue Star Planning, we have made this technology available for any production environment, small and large, particularly the printing industry.

Our technology uses the data from your production environment that you already have. These are the production orders and parameters you need to operate your printing machines, assemble raw materials, prepare inks, communicate artwork status, and more. Our platform uses this information to be quickly set up for your factory so you can start scheduling your production orders automatically immediately. Our algorithms do the automatic scheduling of operations on your workstations. Depending on the best matches between production orders, delivery date and time, raw material availability, and more of these constraints, your production orders are automatically placed on the best machine in the most efficient sequence.

Integrated systems

Since the start of the century and before, primarily vendors operating in niche markets implemented branch-specific software platforms for factories in specific industries. From those closed software ecosystems that live on-premise, the transition started to connect more software and platforms only recently. Not just for particular use-cases and locked in, but generic and genuinely open.

As often is the case, consumer fulfillment drives the change. There is an app for that—the availability of a single software application tailored to a particular need. And your business can now benefit from a similar ecosystem of applications and solutions. And you should. Pick the best application for e-mail, the best application for order management, the best for bookkeeping, and the best warehouse management. And now also the best software platform for scheduling and tracking your production orders.

The open platform we have built at Blue Star Planning connects to your existing environment. Our extensive APIs allow hooking into all functionality the planning and scheduling platform offers. In extensively connecting, we take planning and scheduling multiple steps further:

• Real-time tracking of production order progress
• Signaling on the minute-to-minute forecast that is otherwise invisible
• Raw material availability in constraint-based planning
• Telemetry data to backup reports and QA

Start now

We make your start with automated planning as simple as delivering your first production order dataset. With that dataset, we offer direct insight into how our platform benefits your planning department and improvements for your production. Based on our four pillars of optimization (keep your eyes open for our next blogposts!), we can take the optimization as far as you need to.

No matter how optimized your factory is now. Automating your production planning is a good start for further optimization, to be in the know in real-time and able to react ever faster. With a system that grows with you and facilitates technological and organizational change.