Seeking Advice on Advanced Scheduling Tools for Manufacturing

ERPNext Manufacturing
1

Hello ERPNext Community,

I’m seeking insights and advice for a specific use case in our manufacturing setup, and I’m wondering if anyone here has experience or recommendations for a similar scenario.

Our Manufacturing Setup:

  • We operate with 20 workstations, each handling different tasks in a linear flow from start to finish.
  • Each job takes approximately 20 days and consists of multiple tasks, each requiring different skills.
  • Our tasks also involve the use of various raw materials, all managed and tracked within ERPNext.
  • The Bill of Materials (BOMs) for each job is well-defined in ERPNext.

Our Challenge:
We’re looking to optimize our scheduling process to minimize the makespan of these jobs. Our current setup requires manual scheduling of tasks in ERPNext, but we’re interested in automating this process, especially given the complexity of our operations (long job durations, multiple skills requirements, etc.).

Specific Questions:

  1. Has anyone successfully integrated advanced scheduling tools like Google OR-Tools or OptaPlanner with ERPNext for similar manufacturing environments? If so, could you share your insights on the process and outcomes?
  2. Are there alternative tools or methods you’d recommend that work well with ERPNext for optimizing schedules in a complex manufacturing setup?
  3. Any tips on handling the integration, particularly regarding data synchronization between ERPNext and external scheduling tools, would be highly appreciated.

I’m open to exploring custom solutions and would value any guidance, experiences, or suggestions from the community. Thank you in advance for your help!

Best regards,
Anders

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2

Have a look at FrePPle, a semi-open-source producing planning tool. They have great documentation available about the integration process.

@szufisher might have an ERPNext integration in the works.

We are also starting to develop a production scheduling tool on a custom fork (@saifi0102). This will be a Gantt chart with drag-and-drop functionally for scheduling. The production schedule will support stock forecasting and replenishment, and also give predicated delivery dates.

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