Smart planning for flexible production: people-centric and data-driven

The rise of mass customisation is leading to a huge increase in product variability and smaller batch sizes. At the same time, there is increasing pressure to reduce lead times and costs. In these high-mix, low-volume production environments, the human operator remains indispensable, but planning and organising work is becoming increasingly complex.

Today, many manufacturing companies still rely on paper schedules or complex Excel spreadsheets. These tools are prone to error and leave little room to react quickly to unexpected events such as rush orders, machine problems or staff shortages. There is a need for an intelligent scheduling solution that incorporates real-time data, is flexible enough to deal with disruptions, and is intuitive for planners, line managers and operators. Our researchers are working with software and manufacturing companies to address this challenge.

The impact of this tool is evident in our work with Mariasteen, a Work Integrated Social Enterprise. With 1,000 employees, over 100 machines and work centres, and more than 30,000 production orders a year, scheduling work is no easy task. Their schedulers faced the daily challenge of getting people with different skills to the right place - and responding quickly to change. Together with Solvice and 24Flow , we installed our scheduling tool. The result? Planning is faster and more reliable. This means that delivery dates can be met without additional strain, for example when staffing levels change at the last minute. The most important benefit is that there is more time to focus on the well-being of the employees.

Innovation is also at the heart of OMETA. Together with Flanders Make, they worked on a system that provides real-time insight into production. At Niko, manufacturer of electr(on)isic solutions, an intelligent application was developed that calculates OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) in real time via OPC Unified Architecture (standard for data exchange from sensors to cloud applications). The benefits are tangible:

• Operatoren krijgen proactief suggesties om storingen op te lossen.
• De productiestatus wordt automatisch teruggekoppeld naar SAP voor herplanning.
• Storingen worden sneller aangepakt dankzij visuele dashboards en storingsanalyses.

The Digital Production Assistant also automatically logs faults and their solutions, allowing the system to learn and improve efficiency. The result: efficiency gains of up to 20%, reduced downtime and better communication between departments.

The strength of Flanders Make lies not only in providing the right technological expertise, but also in collaboration. Flanders Make was the link that brought together software companies, production companies and research teams around a common goal. The result was not only the development of innovative tools, but also their concrete integration for and by the industry. All parties involved reaped the benefits of this collaboration.