Data model for supply chain planning

• US 7,532,945 B2
• Filed: 04/20/2001
• Issued: 05/12/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/03/1998
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Söhner, Volkmar A.
• Primary Examiner(s): PALADINI, ALBERT WILLIAM
• Application Number:
  US09/838,793
• Publication Number:
  US 20020032492A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,944 Days
• Field of Search: 700/95, 700/102, 700/100, 700/99, 700/106, 705/8
• US Class Current: 700/99
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0631 Resource planning, allocation, distributing or scheduling for enterprises or organisations

Abstract

A data model for a supply chain is provided whereby individual working steps in a production process are defined as activities, and organized groups of such activities are defined as orders. Activities are allocated to no more than one resource and contain information concerning the start and finish time for the activity, any resource on which the activity is currently scheduled, and a list of alternative resources, if any. Activities are linked to each other via auxiliary objects, which contain information concerning the minimum and maximum time between activities. Orders may contain input and/or output interface nodes, representing the materials consumed and produced by the order. Each output interface node representing a quantity of material created from one order is linked via an auxiliary object to respective input interface node or nodes from other orders that are scheduled to receive that material. Order anchors are defined whereby a planning algorithm can easily reference an order by its order number in a database table. Planning object anchors allow the planning algorithm to access all the orders for a given material, and resource anchors permit access to all activities scheduled for that resource.

Claims

1. A method for monitoring the use of resources and materials in a manufacturing sequence, comprising the steps of:

storing data representing said manufacturing sequence in a data structure;

organizing said data in said data structure as one or more orders representing one or more materials being consumed and/or created in said manufacturing sequence;

linking said orders so that the order that consumes a material follows the order that creates the respective material in said manufacturing sequence;

linking, for each of said orders, one or more activities representing materials being processed by manufacturing resources;

linking said activities chronologically within each order, said link between activities further comprising data representing temporal constraints between said activities and temporal constraints between activities in different orders in said manufacturing sequence;

providing a link from one or more of said activities for one or more orders to a data that identifies a corresponding resource; and

determining based on a start time for a first of the orders whether a specific resource is in use at any given time during said manufacturing sequence.

2. The method of claim 1, and further comprising the step of determining a time and duration for all of said activities directed to a particular one of said manufacturing resources.

3. The method of claim 1, and further comprising the step of chronologically storing in a database table all activities scheduled to take place in said manufacturing sequence, said storing performed using said data representing temporal constraints between order.

4. The method of claim 1, and further comprising the step of determining the availability of one or more of said manufacturing resources for uses other than said manufacturing sequence by calculating said availability based on said information about temporal constraints between said order for a given manufacturing supply chain.

5. The method of claim 1, and further comprising the step of determining all of said order for a particular one of said materials and determining the quantity of said material that is needed for respective ones of said manufacturing resources.

6. A method for facilitating the dynamic allocation of manufacturing resources and materials in a manufacturing sequence, comprising the steps of:

storing data for said manufacturing sequence in a data structure, said stored data structure comprising one or more orders representing one or more materials being consumed and/or created in said manufacturing sequence, said orders being linked such that the order that consumes a material follows the order that creates said material in said manufacturing sequence, each of said orders comprising one or more activities representing materials being processed by said manufacturing resources, said activities being linked chronologically within each order, said link between activities further comprising data of temporal constraints between said activities;

determining a start time for a first activity of said manufacturing sequence; and

determining using said data of temporal constraints in said data structure start times for all of said activities that are performed on a particular one of said manufacturing resources.

7. The method of claim 6, and further comprising the steps of determining a quantity and time for said materials being supplied to each of said manufacturing resources by providing the start time for the first of said activities of the first of said orders, and determining said start time for each of said orders that consumes said materials using said data of temporal constraints between activities;

supplying the necessary quantity of said materials to each of said manufacturing resources in said manufacturing sequence at said determined times based on said determined time and quantity for said materials for respective ones of said manufacturing resources.

8. The method of claim 7, and further comprising the step of adjusting said start time for one of said activities based on the unavailability of a particular one of said manufacturing resources, and re-calculating the time at which materials need be supplied to each of said manufacturing resources based on said adjusted start time.

9. The method of claim 6 wherein said data structure further comprises input nodes representing materials consumed by an order and output nodes representing materials created by an order.

10. The method of claim 9, and further comprising the step of determining a bill of materials for an output material by identifying all of the input nodes corresponding to the output node for said material.

11. The method of claim 6, wherein said data structure further comprises data representing temporal constraints between said activities in different orders in said manufacturing sequence.

12. The method of claim 11 and further comprising the step of determining all orders for a specific material and storing said orders in a database of order information.

13. The method of claim 6, and further comprising

adjusting said start time for one or more of said activities in said manufacturing sequence;

and

using said data structure to dynamically re-calculate said start times for one or more of said activities on subsequent ones of said manufacturing resources.

14. The method of claim 6, and further comprising the step of optimizing the use of said manufacturing resources in real time by dynamically allocating certain of said manufacturing resources to other uses based on the calculated availability of said manufacturing resources in said manufacturing sequence.

15. A system for supply chain planning, said system having means for storing data in a data structure, so that an application program can access data therein, said stored data structure comprising:

a plurality of orders, at least one of said orders having a pre-assigned order number, stored in the means for storing, each said order comprising;

a) one or more activities each representing a working step that is indivisible from a production planning perspective, and each being linked to a reference to all immediately preceding activities;

b) one or more input interface nodes each representing a material consumed by said order, each input interface node being linked to all activities that consume said material;

c) one or more output interface nodes each representing a material created by said order, each output interface node being linked to all activities that create said material; and

d) a database table having an entry for each pre-assigned order number matched to a corresponding object identity, which is a reference to the respective order;

wherein one of said orders being a first order, each output interface node of said first order being linked to a respective input interface node of each of the other of said orders subsequent to said first order that are scheduled to consume the material associated with said output interface node of said first order.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein said reference to all immediately preceding activities each have attributes, said attributes including a minimum and a maximum time interval between the linked activities and a type of temporal constraint.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein each activity has at least four attributes, said attributes including a start time, a finish time, a reference to the resource on which the activity is currently scheduled, and a reference to a list of one or more alternative resources.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein each input interface node contains data identifying a required material, a required quantity, a time at which said required material is required, and any shortage of said required material, said shortage being defined as a difference between the required quantity and the quantity of said required material that is delivered by other orders or stock, each output interface node containing data identifying a created material, a created quantity, a time at which said created material is created, and any surplus of said created material, said surplus defined as a difference between the created quantity and the quantity of said created material that is not yet delivered to other orders.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein said database table is stored in memory which includes a RAM buffer.

21. The system of claim 15, wherein each material has a pre-assigned material number, said data structure further comprising a database table having an entry for each pre-assigned material number matched to a reference to at least one input interface node at which the respective material is consumed, and an entry for each pre-assigned material number matched to a reference to at least one output interface node at which the respective material is created.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein said database table further comprises data identifying each material, said data identifying at least one of plant, storage location, and batch.

23. The system of claim 15, wherein each resource has a pre-assigned resource number, said data structure further comprising a database table having an entry for each pre-assigned resource number matched to a chronological sequence of activities scheduled on the respective resource.

24. The system of claim 15 wherein one of said at least one order has k output interface nodes, representing an order producing k different materials.

25. The system of claim 15, wherein a plurality of activities are grouped to form an operation, and wherein the first activity of said operation represents a set up for production, and wherein the successive activities of said operation each represents steps in production.

20. The system of c1aim 15, wherein when an order comprises a plurality of said activities therein, two or more of said activities together constituting an operation, each operation having a pre-assigned operation number, said data structure further comprising a database table having an entry storing each object identity and pre-assigned operation number matched to the earliest activity of the respective operation.

26. A data structure stored so as to be accessed by an application program for supply chain planning in a data processing system, comprising:

a plurality of orders, each of said plurality of orders having at least one of;

a) one or more input interface nodes, wherein each input interface node represents a material consumed by said order; and

b) one or more output interface nodes, wherein each output interface node represents a material created by said order;

wherein one of said orders being a first order, one or more of said output interface nodes of said first order is linked to a respective input interface node of each subsequent order scheduled to consume the material associated with said output interface node of said first order.

27. The system of claim 26, said plurality of orders including n orders and one subsequent order, each output interface node of said n orders being linked to a respective input interface node of said one subsequent order such that said one subsequent order consuming the materials supplied by said n orders.

28. The system of claim 26, said plurality of orders including a first order and m subsequent orders, each input interface node of said m subsequent orders being linked to a respective input interface node of said first order such that said first order supplies the material demands of said m subsequent orders.

29. The system of claim 26, wherein each input interface node contains information regarding a required material, required quantity, the time at which said required material is required, and any shortage of said required material, said shortage defined as the difference between the required quantity and the quantity of said required material that is delivered by other orders or stock, and wherein each output interface node contains information regarding a created material, created quantity, the time at which said created material is created, and any surplus of said created material, said surplus defined as the difference between the created quantity and the quantity of said created material that is not yet delivered to other orders.

30. The system of claim 29, wherein each of said at least one order has a pre-assigned order number, said data structure further comprising a database table having an entry for each pre-assigned order number matched to its object identity, which is a reference to the respective order.

31. The system of claim 26, wherein each material has a pre-assigned material number, said data structure further comprising a database table having an entry for each pre-assigned material number matched to a reference to at least one input interface node at which the respective material is consumed, and an entry for each pre-assigned material number matched to a reference to at least one output interface node at which the respective material is created.

32. The system of claim 31, wherein said database table further comprises identifying information for each material including at least one of plant, storage location, and batch.

33. A system for supply chain planning, said system comprising means for storing data and a data structure stored on said means for storing so that an application program can access data therein, said stored data structure comprising:

a plurality of orders having a pre-assigned order numbers, each said order representing at least one activity, wherein

a) each activity representing a working step that is indivisible from a production planning perspective;

b) each activity being linked to a reference to all immediately subsequent activities;

c) each activity being linked to a reference to all immediately preceding activities;

d) said reference to all immediately preceding activities and said references to all immediately subsequent activities each have at least two attributes, including a minimum and a maximum time interval between activities and a type of temporal constraint;

e) a plurality of said activities within at least one of the orders constitutes an operation, having a pre-assigned operation number;

a database table having an entry for each pre-assigned order number matched to an object identity, which is a reference to the respective order; and

a database table having an entry for each object identity and pre-assigned operation number matched to the earliest activity of the respective operation.