AI planning board for on-time delivery in a precision job shop

Added 2026-10-14

Role

production planner, plant manager

The problem

In a precision job shop with many small orders, it is hard to see which orders are slipping and which machines are overloaded, so promised lead times are guesses. At CAPAUL, manual coordination of the plan took about eight hours a week, and delays were often discovered late, leaving a week's notice to the customer instead of months.

Step by step

Measure on-time delivery and quoted versus actual lead times for the last 6 months.
Clean the routing and capacity data: realistic setup and run times, shifts, machine availability.
Connect the APS to ERP orders and to shop-floor progress feedback.
Run the APS plan in parallel with the current plan for a few weeks and compare dates.
Use the planning board daily: late operations, overloaded machines, material shortages.
Quote lead times from the planned load rather than fixed standard lead times.
Review on-time delivery, planning hours and inventory monthly.

Tools

INFORM FELIOS APS: used at CAPAUL
Other APS tools: Asprova, Siemens Opcenter APS, PlanetTogether, DELMIA Ortems, Fastems, and ERP planning modules

Result

CAPAUL (precision parts for aerospace, medical, energy and rail, Eupen, Belgium), INFORM FELIOS since 2021: on-time delivery up about 25%; weekly planning coordination down from about eight hours to about two; inventory kept flat relative to revenue despite strong growth (INFORM success story, a vendor claim).

As reported by the source; most figures are vendor or self-reported and not independently verified.

Human review: cautions

Vendor-published figures over several years; other improvements may also have contributed.
An APS is only as good as routings and feedback from the floor.
Planners must keep the right to override; explain the plan, don't just impose it.

Try it yourself

You are a production planner. I will paste open orders (order, part, quantity, due date, routing with machine and hours) and machine capacity per week.
1. Calculate load per machine per week and flag overloads.
2. List orders at risk of being late and why.
3. Propose a re-sequencing or overtime plan to recover them, with trade-offs.
4. Give realistic lead-time quotes for a new order of [part, quantity].
Show your calculations.

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Sources

https://www.inform-software.com/en/success-stories/capaul