Prescriptive Analytics & CPLEX Decision Optimization and TM1 Dashboard: Combined Planning Power at JLG Industries

Excavator digging
Bullseye clipart

The Challenge

At JLG, a monthly Sales, Inventory, and Operations Plan (SIOP) is produced. The Master Schedule determines when and where a machine will be manufactured based on the SIOP Plan. Adjustments to the Master Schedule are made by day, product, production facility, assembly line,
and forecast groups and takes approximately 10 days to complete.

Puzzle clip art

The Solution

Through research, it was determined that CPLEX and TM1 would be very compatible and the necessary toolset to deliver the Master Schedule solution at JLG.

thumbs up clip art

The Benefit

This resulted in an estimated $700K annual savings, enabling us to shift our focus to more strategic work instead of admin work.

JLG Logo

About JLG Industries, Inc.

JLG Industries, Inc. has been earning customer confi dence and trust through innovation since 1969. Our customers are our greatest priority, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to understanding their challenges.

As the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of access equipment, JLG products and personnel can be found all over the world, going above and beyond to support customers. We deliver the powerful, versatile equipment they need along with unsurpassed training and service, because we have a responsibility to be more than a manufacturing company. We are a partner in our customer’s success, reaching out worldwide to enable performance, boost productivity, ensure uptime and support forward progress. JLG is an Oshkosh Corporation Company.

Bullseye clipart

The Challenge

At JLG, a monthly Sales, Inventory, and Operations Plan (SIOP) is produced and the Master Schedule needs to align the SIOP plan to the current Master Schedule; adjustments are made at the production slot level by day, product, production facility, assembly line, and forecast group. Planning takes place across 35 active assembly lines, 220 active products, 10 forecast groups, and up to 24 periods in the planning horizon. This equates to approximately 1.8 Million total intersections for the master scheduler to review. Each month, the master schedule alignment to SIOP plan would require up to 10 days of work to complete and was considered ‘admin’ work.

The 10 day process is certainly a disadvantage, but the impacts of this are much more detrimental. Differences in planning bills for regional forecasts are signifi cant enough, that until processing is complete, supplier forecasts are misstated. Due to material lead times, the MRP supplier forecast needs to be as accurate as possible, and updated quickly after each SIOP cycle. Ultimately, the suppliers’ ability to react and adjust to updated demand are extremely limited.

“12 minutes from the time I opened TM1 for production line 22 until I got the e-mail confirmation that updates were made to the master schedule.”

- - Bruce DeMaster, Value Stream Manager

Puzzle clip art

Delivering the Solution

JLG partnered with QueBIT in May of 2016 for their first TM1 implementation. The focus of this solution was to migrate their SIOP Model from EP to TM1, and to automate all other aspects of the SIOP process that were previously done in Excel. JLG and QueBIT continue this relationship and initiated the Master Schedule project in 2017 with a core focus on improving forecast accuracy, while streamlining and automating processes. In addition, JLG is dedicated to ensuring future scalability for all models and knowledge transfer.

JLG presented a future state vision of the Master Schedule with 3 main goals:

  1. Reduce manual effort by the Master Scheduler
  2. More timely and accurate supplier forecast
  3. More timely and accurate financial analysis for projected spend and budgets

JLG and QueBIT worked together to understand the business requirements, to determine the most appropriate toolset to solve this problem. As a result, the TM1 and CPLEX solution was developed.

CPLEX TM1 Integration

Through research, it was determined that CPLEX and TM1 would be very compatible and the necessary toolset to deliver the Master Schedule solution at JLG.

CPLEX is an Optimization Software owned by IBM. CPLEX is a prescriptive tool, which seeks to determine the best solution or outcome among various choices, given certain parameters. CPLEX offers engines for optimization which TM1 can leverage. In addition, data structures needed for solutions are similarly formatted to the way TM1 already holds data.

Planning Analytics/TM1 is a perfect repository for data, specifically optimization data, results, and constraints. In addition, TM1 can serve as a “gate keeper” for optimization purposes. Data cleansing is an important step in any optimization problem; by programming certain logic and rules, TM1 can “cleanse” the data prior to reaching CPLEX for optimization. CPLEX does not have a user interface, but its results can be displayed through TM1, which has several options for interfaces.

Together, CPLEX and TM1 offer a seamless, user-driven experience, which can deliver powerful optimization results at the press of a button.

Products Used:

IBM planning Analytics logo

Request a Planning Session With a QueBIT Expert

Participate in an hour-long discussion with one of our Solution Architects and receive an agile planning roadmap to help your company progress along its journey to business agility.