After a long gap, I am once again continuing my earlier OPM upgrade blog series. Carrying on from where I left, OPM upgrade is definitely different unlike the other module upgrades in Release 12+. This is due to fact that Oracle has introduced much awaited inventory convergence in this version. Before we jump on to the inventory convergence, associated impact and some of the challenges which customer might face, I would like to share some details on the upgrade steps for an OPM customer. For OPM customers, there are some additional steps to be performed during the upgrades. Please refer oracle support website for details on OPM migration. Usually upgrades are performed through various iterations and each upgrade would have a few sub-phases, ‘pre-migration’, ‘inline migration’ and post migration’. To complete iteration these sub-phases are followed by additional functional configurations, unit and integration testing. While these iterations are in process, another team in parallel would work on re-certifying CEMLI’s to work in the new environment so that when the final system integration testing is being performed, all the pieces of an upgrade puzzle can be tied together.

Going little deeper into upgrade migration steps, there are a set of pre-determined activities which are performed, but the key lies in pre-migration steps which involve convergence migration setup and post migration steps where the transformation to new model happens. Convergence migration setup form facilitates customers to review their current setup related to companies, organizations, warehouses, items, batches and quality data. Especially in the first upgrade iteration, this phase is the most critical phase where a  high degree of collaboration happens from the customer and vendor team. Hence, we usually recommend a higher time allocation from the customer team during this phase of the project. The setups thus finalized, will determine the new model. Some of the validations which happen are inventory validations, process execution batch validations, quality validations, MAC to SLA model validations etc. Brief details on each of these validations are available in OPM migration guide.

Our experience in some of OPM upgrade cases indicates details provided in migration guide are not sufficient, for example, how the status control of OPM is handled in discrete with new on-hand material status control or how is ISO handled with upgrade, there are some challenges in handling non-inventory items with new model, dual UOM control and deviation issues affects transactions in new model, negative inventory issues in new model, why all the attributes are not migrated during upgrade. While these are some of the issues, there are many more that affect the overall upgrade activity and indirectly impact solution acceptance and user experience with new solution. In addition to this, especially in the case of OPM upgrades, the volume of data in specific functional areas affects the overall upgrade blackout time and needs detailed evaluation before any plan is finalized. This is where our deep-domain expertise in the process manufacturing vertical can help our customers.

Production scheduling has traditionally been considered as a manual and iterative exercise by shop floor planners who are required to continuously balance the material and capacity constraints.  This has often led to poor manufacturing performance, excess inventory buildup, un-planned downtimes and eventually resulted in shop floor nervousness. With the ever evolving supply chain strategies and demand driven production methodologies, finite production scheduling is being seen today as a means to achieve manufacturing excellence and business transformation.

So where does production scheduling fit into the complex equation of Supply Chain Planning?

We all know that material moves through a supply chain from Buy->Make->Sell, where as the planning activity focuses in the reverse direction Sell (Demand) -> Make (Manufacture) -> Buy (Supply). Each of these individual activities can be broken down to their sub levels but as we can see, Make (manufacturing) is where the core production activity is centered in a typical supply chain. Production planning amounts to what and when we need to manufacture in order to effectively meet the customer demands where as Production Scheduling is the actual process of deciding how to commit resources between various possible tasks. In a nutshell, if you have planned to do multiple tasks, you cannot do all tasks in one go – you have to schedule and synchronize them. The end objective of Production Scheduling is to maximize through-put & customer service levels and at the same time minimize downtime, inventory, changeovers, overtime etc. All this leads us to believe that in order to have a perfectly synchronized manufacturing eco system, today’s shop floor planners need efficient and cutting edge scheduling tools.

Oracle’s best of breed Value chain planning solutions (VCP) address a wide array of supply chain planning challenges in today’s world.  One of the key elements of Oracle VCP is Production Scheduling (PS) ,which is a finite planning and scheduling tool that was originally part of JD Edwards which after the acquisition by Oracle, has been seamlessly integrated with Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle Production scheduling solution comes with feature rich functionalities that would make the life of a shop floor planner more comfortable. The planners can now not only make informed decisions but also align the manufacturing activities to meet the organizations objectives. Some of the high level features of Oracle Production Scheduling (PS) are –

1. Graphical and intuitive UI with high level of flexibility built into it such as Gantt charts, Multi-Capacity Resource views, graphical routings Etc
2. Analytical view with drill down to root cause analysis of constraint violations.
3. Ability to model complex what-if simulations and compare against a base plan
4. Automatic floating bottle neck detection and rescheduling
5. Key Performance Indicators (for e.g. order fill, line fill, Inv. Turns, resource utilization etc)
6. Out-Of-Box integration with Oracle E-Business Suite

Oracle Production Scheduling supports both discrete and process mode of manufacturing. PS can be implemented either in a standalone mode or in an integrated mode with Oracle EBS. PS requires very minimal setups from an Implementation perspective and can be deployed almost immediately.

This is a brief introduction to Production Scheduling (PS) module. In next discussions I would be giving a high level overview of PS’s close cousin – Oracle Strategic Network Optimization (SNO).

In the fascinating world of Oracle applications, the process manufacturing industry is broadly categorized as ‘Discrete manufacturing’ and ‘Process manufacturing’. Technically, there are quite a good number of differences in the way one looks at each of these manufacturing streams. For ease of understanding, in discrete manufacturing one assembles to make things, while in process manufacturing as the name suggests, one processes to get some output. If we dig deeper into the process manufacturing stream, it typically deals with mixing, blending to yield products, co-products and sometimes by-products. Another easy way to understand this is that in the process manufacturing industry, the raw material consumed will eventually lose its form to yield a finished product. Rarely will you come across a scenario where the finished product can be reverse engineered to yield the raw material. This is one major difference as compared to discrete manufacturing where the finished product can be de-assembled to get the components back. The final product characteristic is determined through a formula, recipe and routing along with different process instructions and parameters being maintained throughout the process.

At a broader level, some of the sub-verticals of this industry include Chemicals, Metal and mines, Food and Beverages, Pharma etc. There are a few more like Glass, textile, paper manufacturing etc, which again can be broadly categorized under the above or can be a different category by itself. Within each of these sub-verticals, there are categories like the Food and beverages have dairy, chocolate, juice, meat and poultry etc. as categories, whereas the Chemicals have streams like paints, fertilizers, specialty chemicals, glass etc. This list can be endless, but the common thread across these verticals, sub-verticals and categories is that there are formulas, recipes, operations, routings, batch processing yielding products, co-products and by-products, measuring product in multiple unit of measures, quality grade and status, ensuring traceability of material across the supply chain.

I have been fortunate enough in my working career to be associated with these different verticals directly or indirectly. Every association has resulted in some new learning about the process manufacturing stream, with each vertical/sub-verticals having a few common challenges like:

-          Ingredient characteristic variability, which affects product quality

-          Process control and stability to yield consistent product quality

-          Visibility and traceability across the supply chain

-          Cost and margin pressures

-          Process cycle time and shop-floor control

-          Non-conformance and deviation

-          Regulatory Compliances

Right from the initial process manufacturing solution GEMMS, till the recent Oracle Release 11i, most of these requirements have been addressed directly or indirectly. With the introduction of some new features in Oracle’s R12 OPM solution and a combination of new modules which are now available for OPM customers, most of the above mentioned challenges  can be addressed quite comprehensively.

Today I would like to conclude here. In my next update I would initiate a discussion on R12 upgrade as an option for any existing OPM enterprise on 11i or earlier version, typical challenges, some best practices and then move on to the new features and modules available for OPM enterprises.

Find Part 1 of Pankaj’s series here.