The Study On Processes Improvements Of ATO Master Production Scheduling

In the21st century, with diversified customer requirements and increasingly intensified global competition, manufacturing companies are under great pressure to continually shorten delivery lead times, improve the quality of products and services and lower their operations costs. This has forced more and more companies to adopt the Assembly To Order (ATO) manufacturing strategy. However, great challenges are still being faced by those companies that have adopted the ATO manufacturing strategy. Among those great challenges, the unsatisfactory Available To Promise (ATP) function of master scheduling is the key obstacle, especially for a great number of Chinese manufacturers, which is also a critical issue that has to be solved.Thanks to the fact that to improve the master scheduling process is one of the several effective methods to tackle this sticky unsatisfactory ATP function of master scheduling, this dissertation just focuses on how to improve the ATP function of master scheduling, which is the major subject to be researched. First, the paper reviews the current overseas and domestic research progress on the subject of master scheduling, follows an introduction of all theories related to master scheduling including several manufacturing strategies, mainstream production planning theories and Business Process Improvement (BPI) theories. Secondly, the paper makes the current status map of the master scheduling processes at E Company highlighting some of the major issues, and finds that the performance of E company will be better by improving the master scheduling processes. With this find, some BPI principles are proposed and a theoretic framework on how to improve the ATP function of master scheduling is also designed. At last, the theoretical framework is being tested in E Company. With the successful case study of master scheduling BPI project in E Company, which focuses on some key success factors, the effectiveness of the theoretical framework has been proved. A conclusion is thus drawn:for a manufacturing company that deploys the ATO manufacturing strategy, it’s effective to better the ATP function by improving the master scheduling processes.What are the specific methods to improve the reliability and timeliness of the ATP function of master scheduling? Here are some contributions made by this dissertation with the methodology of literature review, conducting investigations and case study. No.1, it’s a must to have top management chair the Sales&Operations Planning (S&OP) in order to make the S&OP process to become a mechanism of cross functional communication and decision making, and to better the resources planning and deployments required by the master scheduling process that dynamically balance demand and supply. No.2, to facilitate the optimization of the components planning process, the materials of raw, components or subassemblies can be classified into two parts:the common parts pool with great and stable demands and the special or optional parts pool with slight and unstable demands. For the common parts pool with great and stable demands, the electronic kanban system may be deployed, for the special or optional parts pool with slight and unstable demands, MRP is still the best method, which will be enhanced by the safety stock setting aimed to resolve the differences between the forecasts and the actual demands. No.3, the ATP process based upon the product family aggregate capacity may be more effective and stable, this is because it doesn’t need to modify the master production schedules as long as the actual capacity required is not greater than the rated available aggregate capacity of the product family, and the consequent material issues may be solved successfully. No.4, the reliability of the ATP function will be improved by a two layer system, which is based upon the improved middle term aggregate capacity planning of the product group and the components planning process. No.5, the flexibility of the master scheduling process may be enhanced with effective lead time management, which is linked to the quoted delivery lead time promised by the company.