Start-up sees spreadsheet-to-APS gap in consumer goods

No corner of the enterprise software market has seen as many would-be evolutions as production planning. But a decade after advanced planning & scheduling (APS) engines emerged, many manufacturers still use spreadsheets for short-term scheduling.

This lingering reliance on spreadsheets has opened the door for new software "somewhere between a spreadsheet and APS." JRG Software targets consumer product goods (CPG) manufacturers with a scheduling package that can be deployed in-house, or subscribed to via hosted service. JRG Cofounder and CEO Jonathon Knight says JRG Factory Scheduler does not seek to model all possible resources and perform full optimization the way APS engines do. "It's a simpler approach in which the software builds a profile of the user and business scenarios, and looks for patterns to generate a feasible schedule," he says.

A key goal of the software, adds Knight, is to enable CPG manufacturers to "build to consumption" by major retailers rather than build to a forecast. "It's more akin to a replenishment model, with the factory itself becoming more responsive to actual demand," he says.

One user is Monterey Pasta, a Salinas, Calif.-based manufacturer of pasta and sauces. Dan Brown, VP of operations, says the company used Microsoft Excel to schedule the factory, "but as we grew, it became increasingly difficult to do with Excel and to manage through a single person."

Brown says the JRG tool can quickly perform scheduling operations and show the impact of order changes while minimizing inventory and machine changeovers. "It's helped us be more flexible as orders come in," he says. "Basically, the system takes in information on changeovers, run times, and target efficiencies, and it schedules the plant based on the most efficient way to meet demand."

Katherine Jones, a managing director with Boston-based analyst firm Aberdeen Group, calls the JRG tool a "nice little package" for single-site environments, especially among small and midsize CPG manufacturers that aren't looking to optimize an entire distribution chain using APS.

Jones sees JRG's hybrid offering as filling a niche for companies that have problems that "a spreadsheet can't solve." She says JRG would do well to seek out partnerships with ERP vendors that target CPG, but don't have strong or low-cost factory scheduling tools.