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Technology Watch Knowledge Base |
SCOOP - Sophisticated cooperation on cooperative planning and control |
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PROBLEM STATEMENT |
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The SME acting in the European printing and textile industries still have substantial competitive advantages in technical areas. However, international competitors start expanding their influence in Europe. To stay competitive in a global, highly dynamic market requires the optimisation of co-operation between SME to react in a flexible way to market demands. Therefore production has to be optimised along the entire supply chain, which requires close co-operation between the participating companies. In addition to the vertical co-operation along the supply chain there is an increasing need for horizontal co-operation especially in the European print industry. In order to provide full service to their customers, companies accept orders although they do not have the capacity for processing these orders or they cannot produce at optimal cost due to a lack of specialised equipment. Therefore these orders are outsourced to co-operating companies which either have free capacities or the equipment to produce at optimum cost. |
Planning and controlling production processes in dynamic networks of co-operating companies is currently hindered by several problems: · Especially small companies do not use IT systems for local production planning and control due to high investment costs and the inability of existing PPC systems to deal with highly dynamic changes of the production plan imposed by customer requests. · Production planning across an entire network of co-operating companies is only possible if all companies use the same system for local planning and control and are willing to pass information about local planning and control to their partners. · Vertical and horizontal co-operation requires negotiation, which is time-consuming and error-prone. · Finding possible partners is not supported sufficiently by electronic marketplaces. |
IMPROVEMENT APPROACH |
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Within the SCOOP project a flexible infrastructure for co-operation in dynamic SME networks has been developed. Innovation is achieved through the introduction of new and/or reengineered business processes, dealing with flexible production planning and control. This is supported by a sophisticated SCOOP tool set, a prototype application to demonstrate the feasibility of the innovative concept. It leads to the following : - User-friendly local planning and control Since many (small) companies in the textile and printing industry still do not use PPC systems, a simulation based PPC system is developed. It deals with the specific needs for rapid short-cycle planning, which is performed locally at end user level. A major issue of this system is its user-friendliness. Due to the lack of specially trained personnel in small companies this system will allow easy modelling of production processes even for non-IT-specialists. |
-Cooperative enterprise network planning and control Global planning and control across the network of co-operating companies is achieved by a module which communicates via a well-defined interface with the local planning and control systems of the individual company. The global planning and control process is not dominated by any member of the network. -Automated negotiation Based upon the co-operative planning system the negotiation of orders can be automated to a high degree. This is accomplished by a negotiation module available in every company. Using automated negotiation, several possible co-operation partners can be asked for offers in parallel and the offers are much more accurate, since they are based on planning data. -Electronic capacity market place To identify new potential partners an electronic capacity marketplace is established. Capacity requests cannot only be issued to known co-operation partners, but also to an electronic capacity broker, where companies which offer specific services can register. |
BENEFITS |
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The use of the SCOOP solution reduces the time needed for order processing (requests, offers, orders) and delivery times by an estimated 20% to 30%. Overall costs are reduced by 15% to 25% (lead times, wastes, fulfilment). To allow optimal use, the SCOOP tools can be integrated with existing enterprise management tools such as ERP and PPC systems. Benefits for the performance of enterprise using the SCOOP solution in highly dynamic demand chains or networks can be summarised as follows : - Reduced lead times through the entire supply network, leading to improvements in responsiveness to customers (who may be another producer, a wholesaler, or a retailer) and customers alike; - Extremely short planning cycles showing the results of short-term operational decisions (operational online planning); - Reduced time to market; - Fast and efficient communication channels; - Effective and fast adaptability of IT systems to structural changes of the environment and internal changes caused by technological or organisational developments; |
- Short- term planning of highly dynamic processes where today's systems normally fail; - Reduced transaction costs; - Create the virtual enterprise; -Increasing the production capacity and the market; - Optimising and stabilising the production and the turnover; - Increase enterprise visibility on the market. All of these benefits are achieved by automating the management of production resources in enterprise networks using the innovative SCOOP solution, leading to a more efficient, distributed production network. |
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