Dear Friends of Xavo,

The life of a factory manager has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Managing a plant at peak efficiency levels requires a complex balancing of many factors. Intricate factory floor plans, large numbers of products and variants and frequent and unexpected events must be managed correctly in order to minimize their effect on production times, delivery dates and costs. It is a real challenge to keep all production processes synchronized.

Manufacturing is a complex beast.

Tobacco and cigarette production are no exceptions. A large and growing number of products cause frequent machine setups. High-performance equipment breaks down at any moment. Last-minute orders wreak havoc with demand forecasts. Material runs out. Internal constraints (machine capabilities and capacities, routing restrictions, factory calendars, equipment maintenance schedules, vacation days, etc.) complicate the production process. The job planning department is nevertheless expected to run the factory such that it always meets the needs of its customers and produces high-quality products.

I have a dream.

What if an optimized production schedule could be created for the entire factory within minutes? What if game-changing events could be managed equally fast? The plant would always be at peak efficiency no matter what the current conditions may be. Broken equipment, unexpected orders, missing raw materials and absent staff could be taken into consideration in real time. A production plan could be calculated for any scenario-expected and unexpected-and the plant would always run optimally under current circumstances.

The dream comes true.

XPS, the Xavo Plant Scheduling is able to plan the whole tobacco factory in real-time. It uses accurate information about the production processes (machines, capacities, recipes, routing restrictions, factory calendars, etc.), the current state of the plant and demand forecasts for its products. XPS plugs into any MES system that provides this type of information. Based on this, advanced scheduling modles and algorithms calculate the optimal production plan within minutes.

How to keep the whole factory in sync?

XPS is using a cutting-edge “requester-fulfiller” scheduling model which is applicable similarly for all production areas. The synchronization between the different departments (make/pack, filter, cut tobacco, leaf blend, casing and flavor) is done by innovative conflict solving mechanisms.

Let’s take a typical example!

If a hot-rocket order is inserted into the make/pack plan, XPS will determine within seconds, if that actions leads to problems regarding the supply of wrapping/packing materials, filter rods or cut tobacco. And last but not least: XPS always comes along with an excellent proposal to solve the problem. The new plan is then visualized in a GANTT dashboard and reviewed by the job planner, who may make manual adjustments to the plan (if deemed necessary) before releasing it back to the shop floor.

Yours truly,

P.S. „Everything is gonna be all right!”