Unlocking efficiency with S/4HANA PP/DS Scheduling Optimizer

By investing the time saved through automation in master data management, businesses not only improve their current operations but also lay a stronger foundation for future initiatives. Such initiatives may include the adoption of new technologies.

Understanding PP/DS Scheduling Optimizer 

At its core, S/4HANA PP/DS Scheduling Optimizer is a sophisticated algorithm designed to improve production scheduling. It is a multifaceted solution that takes into account a variety of constraints, such as machine capacity, labour availability and material requirements. By taking these factors into account, the optimiser can prioritise orders and align plans based on predefined costs and priorities, ensuring that the most crucial tasks are completed first while adhering to the constraints of production resources.

The optimiser is adept at balancing competing objectives, such as reducing setup time and ensuring on-time delivery. However, while it allows you to model many constraints at a high level of detail, we generally recommend going for simplicity and robustness first to avoid creating a monster that relies on many details.

S/4HANA PP/DS Scheduling Optimizer example 

The PP/DS Scheduling Optimizer can be implemented relatively quickly, and once in place, it can either be run and scheduled as a background job or triggered ad hoc by planners. In the example below, we trigger the optimiser directly from the planning board in the S4 Fiori app. 

In the planning board below, we see that many orders are highlighted with a purple underline, indicating that we have overloaded our resource capacity:

We can expand the view for a specific production resource by clicking the arrow in the menu on the left side of the screen:

Furthermore, when we look at the alert monitor, we can see that we have many capacity overload alerts with more details available:

From the planning board, we press the optimise button to run the optimiser.

Afterwards, we can see that the plan has been levelled, and the alerts have been removed:

The optimiser run in the above example is a relatively straightforward setup. As illustrated below, a delay penalty is defined where customer orders are prioritised over demands:

Furthermore, in the objective function, it is prioritised to reduce order delays while also seeking to reduce setup times (although with lower priority):

These screenshots illustrate how straightforward setting up the PP/DS Scheduling Optimizer can be and the tangible impact it has on the planning board. The before-and-after comparison clearly demonstrates the optimiser’s effectiveness in streamlining production schedules to achieve optimal outcomes. 

In the example above, four weeks of plans were optimised with the click of a button. While the plan may still need fine-tuning by a planner, the optimised schedule is clearly a better starting point. 

Summarising some of the benefits of utilising PP/DS Scheduling Optimizer 

Adopting S/4HANA PP/DS Scheduling Optimizer offers several advantages:

• Improved efficiency: By automating the scheduling process, planners can focus on value-adding activities instead of being bogged down by routine tasks.
• Reinvestment in better data: The time saved can be reinvested in improved master data, lead times, safety stocks, run rates etc., further improving the quality of plans and benefiting other organisational areas such as production and logistics.
• Improved accuracy: The optimiser’s precision in scheduling reduces the risk of human error and ensures a more reliable production plan.
• Increased speed of replanning: The optimiser allows for faster updates of the entire plan when replanning is needed, for example, in case of a line breakdown or similar.
• Increased productivity: Optimised schedules mean that resources are used effectively, leading to increased throughput and reduced bottlenecks.
• Standardised planning process and risk reduction: The optimiser allows us to standardise how we plan across the company, making the process more rule-based and less bound to what is inside the mind of the individual planners. 

The S/4HANA PP/DS Scheduling Optimizer is not just a tool for today but an investment in the future of production planning. As businesses look towards a future with fewer resources and greater demands, the optimiser is an underutilised tool that can quickly deliver efficiency and automation gains.