Production processes in the food industries, in particular in dairies and in beverage production, often require intermediate storage in tanks or silos. Often a tank may hold different products at different times; in that case the tank is denoted as "multi-product tank" or "non-determined tank". A single production batch may also use multiple source tanks for the same raw material component and multiple target tanks for the same target component. Scheduling of such production is highly complicated. By using an efficient scheduling tool it is possible to optimize the utilization of limited storage capacities in order to minimize investments into expansion of storage facilities.
Scheduling Solution
The scheduling workframe in ORSOFT Manufacturing Workbench shows the results of successful tank scheduling. The cycles of filling, emptying (depletion) and cleaning of an individual tank are visualized in a Gantt chart. The integrated histogram shows resulting changes of the tank stock level over the timeline. Additional visualization elements can be used to alert the planner to exceptional situations, such as tank overflow and infeasible product combinations.
Alert symbols show exceptions that need to be looked at and resolved by the planner, e.g. tank splitting via browser cell entry or via dialogue menu.
Integration with SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA
The solution is fully integrated with SAP ERP / SAP S/4HANA and only uses master data and transactional data from SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA. It requires no additional server hardware. Implementation of Tank Allocation Scheduling requires some modification of SAP ERP master data, because the module SAP S/4HANA / SAP ERP PP-PI does not support Tank Allocation Scheduling without additional software which requires more detailed master data information.