Since the health crisis, supply chains have been under unprecedented and long-term pressure, resulting in:
- Longer supply chains and shortages of material resources
- Severe pressure on human resources
- Increasingly complex flows
- Increasingly volatile demand
- New requirements and regulations linked to the ecological transition (e.g. unsold goods, air transport)
In this context, supply chains using traditional planning practices are struggling to meet high-performance expectations.
Starting with the standard MRP signal, which is no longer sufficient! These weaknesses translate into:
- Thousands of exception messages to move production or supplies forwards or backwards
- Impossibility of making any kind of prioritisation
- Which leads to a profusion of e-mails, Excel files and prioritisation meetings in “fire brigade” mode: a purchasing manager receives an average of 50 e-mails a day
- Leading to shortages, overstocking and destruction
The logic of MRP is simple: backward planning of tasks with a breakdown of requirements using the bill of materials.
While this logic is simple, it is erratic, difficult to master and does not reflect real customer priorities, for a number of reasons:
1. The MRP is on / off: each order movement triggers an alert, without the consequences or severity being identifiable
Consequence: instability (everything moves all the time) and loss of priorities
2. The MRP has one signal only and forces an impossible trade-off between “building a realistic plan and losing priorities”; or “keeping priorities and not knowing when products will be delivered“
Consequence: Loss of real customer demand, uninterpretable requirement signal and significant fluctuations
3. MRP is sequential, so an upward or downward movement in demand can take weeks to be perceived at the other end of the chain, and by the time the information is available, it is already too late to react.
Consequence: lack of agility
4. MRP couples upstream and downstream signals, making them uninterpretable: a delay in production leads to a change in transport mode, while production thinks that demand has changed
Consequences: significant noise throughout the industrial signal.
5. MRP logic is applied imperfectly to all functions in the flow: methods (prioritisation of the industrialisation of manufacturing routings), purchasing (contract renewal), quality (prioritisation of numerous quality notices).
Consequence: inconsistency of actions between all departments.
To meet the new challenges of supply chain planning for manufacturers and overcome the limitations of traditional methods, No Chain Technologies and Argon & Co have conceived and developed a revolutionary concept: No Chain Planning®.
This concept brings the customer “at the heart of the factory”, enabling all players to work together towards the best possible performance, despite constraints and in a serene environment.
As none of the software publishers on the market were in a position to support No Chain Planning® concepts, Argon & Co created No Chain Technologies to develop a unique solution.
Discover the No Chain Technologies solution here.
Discover the No Chain Technologies solution here.
