M2M SCM offers flexible forecasting, planning, scheduling and execution tools that will maximize your unique production environment. You can use any or all of these tools in any combination of finite/infinite planning and scheduling, depending on your unique environment.

To help you synchronize your entire operation, M2M SCM employs a memory-resident application server known as the M2M Synchronizer Foundation. The M2M Synchronizer Foundation simultaneously shares data from your back office (M2M ERP) and the M2M SCM planning and scheduling applications. As a result, you have the real-time information you need to make the best production decisions for your operation.

Demand Forecasting

Assessing your product demand is critical for capacity planning, purchasing and inventory management. You may rely on historical performance and trends to make future demand assumptions. Yet, storing, reporting and analyzing meaningful data can be complex and time consuming. Too often, key decisions are made on instinct alone.

To gain a quick and accurate forecast for finished goods, key sub-assemblies and parts, Made2Manage Demand Forecasting takes advantage of the sales data within M2M ERP and a powerful statistic engine to help you make better decisions about your medium-term production plans, long-term capacity plans, purchasing relationships and inventory management.

With M2M Demand Forecasting, you have the ability to:

• Share forecast data between M2M ERP and M2M SCM planning applications.
• Forecast at the lowest level you want. You can also auto-select parts to forecast and indicate whether you want to forecast at a level below the part/revision.
• Calculate demand across multiple facilities.
• Access historical sales data by order date, ship date and issues of material to jobs.
• Create an unlimited number of forecasts or history versions.
• Power your forecasts using a robust, embedded statistical forecasting engine that automatically selects the best forecasting method for each part.
• Generate forecasts for tens or hundreds of thousands of parts within a few minutes.

Advanced Planning

Made2Manage offers basic (infinite) as well as advanced planning software solutions to support your unique production environment. Made2Manage’s infinite planning tools are ideally suited to small and midsize manufacturers that generally are not constrained by capacity or material availability. By contrast, the Made2Manage Advanced Planning software tool, M2M Advanced Planning, is designed for more complex manufacturing environments where material and capacity constraints have a large impact on production operations.

Whether you require infinite or finite planning applications, you can quickly respond to changing forecasts and heavier sales volumes with the appropriate job orders to keep production and purchasing moving forward.

The Made2Manage Advanced Planning supply chain management application helps companies with capacity constraints, significant make-to-stock manufacturing, seasonal demand and/or long lead times drive throughput. With the Made2Manage Advanced Planning software application, manufacturers enjoy all the capabilities of the M2M Planning tool and more. M2M Advanced Planning also accounts for capacity and material availability when creating and modifying jobs, helping you prioritize jobs when total demand exceeds total capacity.

With M2M Advanced Planning you can:

• Balance demand forecasts, sales orders and safety stock needs against capacity and material constraints.
• Use Theory of Constraints methodology to determine the highest throughput, or most profitable plan, when total demand exceeds total capacity.
• Automate production planning with no scheduling simulations or human interaction required.

Capable to Promise

To win and keep the confidence of your customers over time, you strive to successfully manage their expectations from the outset. To avoid “over promising” and “under promising” on job orders, you have to set your delivery dates based on available capacity and material constraints. M2M SCM helps you keep your promises. The M2M SCM Capable to Promise feature makes it easy for your order takers to quickly and accurately determine whether you can meet your customer’s requested delivery dates. If a requested date can not be met, the Capable to Promise application can determine the earliest realistic date a product can be promised and offers alternate delivery options such as split orders. The M2M SCM Capable to Promise feature helps you to:

• Provide realistic product delivery dates based on actual and planned material availability, current production capacity and vendor lead times.
• Improve customer service.
• Keep product sales in line with the capacity of your bottleneck resources.
• Evaluate options for expediting materials or adding capacity to meet a requested date.
• Propose alternate delivery options when you cannot meet the customer’s requested date.

Advanced Scheduling

M2M Advanced Scheduling helps you quickly schedule and sequence all activities in your work centers so you can hit your targeted delivery dates. M2M Advanced Scheduling combines Theory of Constraints methods and powerful optimization technology to help you achieve maximum shop throughput. You also get an easy-to-use, drag and drop Gantt chart facility that sets new standards for viewing and editing your schedules to help you meet your commitments.

M2M Advanced Scheduling enables you to:

• Prioritize, sequence and schedule job operations in one step across work centers within capacity and material constraints.
• Perform scheduling and rescheduling runs fast. Large scheduling runs can be performed in five minutes or less.
• Maximize throughput by buffering constraints, assemblies and shipping.
• Manage additional resources such as labor crews or tooling.
• Minimize late jobs and achieve planned job due dates.