Production Scheduling
Shift downtime into hours with high internal energy costs
Request a demoRequest a demoProduction planning usually follows rigid sequences from the ERP system – without accounting for energy prices. Yet electricity costs vary considerably from hour to hour. Anyone who schedules production orders flexibly in time can significantly cut energy costs at the same output.
Same production volume
Production Scheduling does not change what is produced – only when. You achieve the same output, but at lower energy costs through optimized scheduling.
Reduce energy costs
Production Scheduling moves production orders into favorable price windows. It uses hourly electricity-price forecasts and automatically identifies the most cost-effective time slots for energy-intensive tasks.
Avoid load peaks
Production Scheduling prevents multiple energy-intensive tasks from running simultaneously. This lets you avoid expensive load peaks and reduce your demand charges – a significant cost block in industry.
The building blocks of Production Scheduling
Production Scheduling optimizes the timing of your production orders based on electricity-price forecasts and avoids expensive load peaks.
Request a demoProduction Scheduling integrates directly with your ERP system. It imports production orders with all relevant parameters: order number, product, quantity, earliest start and latest end date.
For each production order, the system forecasts energy demand based on historical data and machine parameters. The larger the diameter or the higher the stroke rate, the more energy is required – the system learns these relationships.
Production Scheduling groups orders intelligently by setup processes. When two orders share the same diameter or the same quality class, they are scheduled back to back to minimize setup times.
The system accounts for product-specific energy profiles. Different materials, basis weights or quality classes have different energy consumption – Production Scheduling optimizes accordingly.
Production Scheduling respects your shift times and personnel availability. If a machine can only start at 6 a.m. and 2 p.m., that is taken into account as a constraint. This produces only feasible plans.
Production Scheduling optimizes multiple machines simultaneously and avoids energy-intensive processes running in parallel. This smooths the load profile and avoids peaks.
Results are visualized as a Gantt chart, with order number and all details directly visible. The optimized plan can be exported as CSV or fed straight back to the ERP.
Frequently asked questions
Answers to the most important questions about energy-cost-based production planning.
More questions?Production Scheduling imports orders from SAP or other ERP systems via standardized interfaces. Each order contains information on product, quantity, machine, earliest start and latest end. After optimization, the plan can be exported back to the ERP.
The system learns from historical production data how much energy each order type requires. It accounts for machine parameters such as stroke rate and diameter as well as product-specific factors such as material and quality class.
Setup times are integrated into the optimization as constraints. The system groups similar orders to minimize setup changes. A change between identical diameters costs less time than a change between different quality classes.
You can define fixed shift times and machine availabilities. The system plans only within the available time windows and respects constraints such as night-shift bans or fixed start times.
It is particularly well suited for batch manufacturing and discrete production, for example in the paper industry, metalworking or among packaging manufacturers. For continuous processes such as in the chemical industry, the application is more complex.
The system first takes over the sequence from the ERP system. It then optimizes the temporal placement to minimize energy costs while preserving the logical dependencies. On request, the sequence itself can also be optimized.
Yes, you can fix individual orders or specify time windows. The system then optimizes around these constraints. Manual adjustments after optimization are also possible.
Depending on complexity and number of orders, an optimization takes a few seconds to several minutes. For periods longer than three days, the computation time can be longer. RIZM continuously works on accelerating the algorithms.
The Operation Hub optimizes the operation of energy assets (CHP, storage, heat pumps). Production Scheduling optimizes the timing of production orders. Both can work together: the Operation Hub delivers energy-price forecasts, and Production Scheduling uses them for order planning.
The system schedules energy-intensive orders so that they run at staggered times. When a large machine is running, other large consumers are deferred to later. This keeps the total load below the peak and saves you demand charges.
