Industrial Automation branch INA 
Datenfabrik.NRW is shaping the digital transformation of real-world production at CLAAS and Schmitz Cargobull – from factory planning and production to logistics. Our working group is responsible for optimizing production planning in this flagship project. Specifically, we are dealing with the following use cases:
1. Schmitz Cargobull:
The situation. Careful rough planning is necessary to ensure smooth cycle production. The goal here is to divide a large pool of customer orders among production days in such a way that all production capacities and delivery dates are met and individual customer requirements are fulfilled.
Our optimized planning. Specifically, planning is optimized as follows. A customer orders a semi-trailer. This order consists of a selection of features (should cooling be installed? Is load securing required?). Daily capacities are available for the installation of each feature. By modeling and solving a combinatorial optimization problem, we determine a distribution of orders across production days so that all capacity constraints of the features are met.
2. CLAAS:
The situation. Materials are pre-processed both on internal machines and by external service providers. In the style of an extended workbench, orders for laser cutting and bending sheet metal are handed over to external service providers when internal machine capacities are exhausted. The goal is to make a cost-optimized selection of these orders, taking into account the desired machine utilization, service provider competence, and compliance with all delivery dates.
Our optimized planning. For each order for laser cutting a single sheet metal, various internal machines or external service providers with the appropriate expertise come into consideration. The assignment of such an order to a machine or an external service provider influences both costs and machine utilization. By modeling and solving a combinatorial optimization problem, we determine the order assignment that minimizes the total costs incurred.
In both use cases, the results we achieve not only significantly improve planning but also provide considerable support to qualified production planners in their day-to-day work.
Do you have comparable use cases in your production planning, warehouse logistics, or purchasing? We would be happy to learn more about your company's situation and work with you to uncover potential through combinatorial optimization. If you are interested, please contact us by email.
