Optimizing Production Planning with Traceability and Attribute-Based Accountability

Organizations must declare where their finished products were manufactured or assembled to comply with regulatory requirements and meet consumer expectations. However, many parts embedded in the product may have been manufactured in different regions, countries or by other organizations around the globe. Moreover, it is not just where the parts originate from, but also how they got there, what labor practices were deployed, and if ethical and health standards were observed during manufacturing. 

In many industries such as pharmaceuticals, medical devices, semiconductors, and food and beverage; organizations are also interested in tracing the entire manufacturing process to ensure product safety and quality. In many industries such as pharmaceuticals, medical devices, semiconductors, and food and beverage; organizations are also interested in tracing the entire manufacturing process to ensure product safety and quality. 

For example, let’s imagine a pharmaceutical company is manufacturing life-saving vaccines. Unfortunately, a quality issue was found in a batch of those vaccines post-distribution. Now, this pharmaceutical company must trace where the affected batch was produced along with the supplier that provided the raw materials and confirm that storage was properly maintained throughout transportation. 

Transaction systems such as Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems keep track of the product through the manufacturing process while it is being made. However, planning systems also need to consider the constraints listed above to ensure that the plan to make the product is realistic. Let’s also take into account expiration dates of work-in-progress (WIP) and finished goods (FG), or perhaps, that a customer may specify that their order must be made with parts from a specific qualified supplier, or a particular facility must be used when there is a choice. 

There may also be a need to ensure that parts from a certain region are not used or sold, because of sanctions, substandard labor practices, tariffs, or its carbon emissions footprint. All aspects need to be considered, including where the product or the parts involved in creating the product are made, as it can also be a factor in planning the product and how it is used.  

This is why Attribute-Based Planning (ABP) architecture is designed to address the planning complexity of such industries. With attributes, customer order requirements are identified as constraints identified by the customer. They are then matched against the attributes of every process that touches the product or part thereof with full pegging functionality. Using the attributes, the planning system identifies where the parts can come from, which suppliers are qualified, and which production processes and equipment must be deployed where and when so that the product is delivered on-time, in-full (OTIF) depending on capacity, priority, and other business constraints.  

With ABP, one can avoid building a separate bill of materials (BOM) and routing for every possible configuration which can result in an exponentially large number of items to maintain. This reduces Stock Keeping Units (SKU) by orders of magnitude. Furthermore, given that the attributes are fully addressed during the planning process, more accurate delivery dates are given in real-time.  

Remember the pharmaceutical life-saving vaccine scenario above? If the company had Attribute-Based Planning (ABP) in production this can help prevent expensive recalls, on-time delivery, and ensure regulatory compliance. Ultimately, reducing unnecessary complexity in production planning.