Challenge

To develop a software solution to improve planning, monitoring capacity and scheduling builds for products in the maritime sector. 

Background

Software technology experts at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) have worked with a defence company to create a spatial capacity planning demonstrator. 

The company faced a particular challenge when it comes to monitoring capacity, planning and scheduling the build of its products. This is made more difficult within strict security constraints.

The spatial capacity planning of activities within a facility has been a significant challenge due to the holistic knowledge required to understand the work required throughout a build process. There are a variety of stakeholders to consider, including shop floor workers and managers, the capacity planners and the product delivery team. 

Adjustments to a product build strategy often need to be made in order to refine a plan and reduce risk. This requires the capacity planning team to re-evaluate the status of facilities and when work can be conducted. 

Each time the plan is updated, it can take several weeks for new scenario planning to be conducted, by which time further changes may have been made, rendering the process obsolete. A greater level of confidence in the plan is needed to be able to work with the latest information.

Innovation

A team from the AMRC has developed an innovative software solution to improve the company’s processes that combines planning information, product bill of materials (BOM) and 3D models, along with facilities information to create a 3D visualisation of the capacity plan.      

The solution is able to utilise new planning information and show the team an updated view of the facility in seconds. The information is shown visually, through using the unity real-time engine to display 3D models inside the facility, so that users can intuitively see future issues regarding physical space.      

Additionally, the plan can be changed in real- time by moving items around within the visualisation, providing the team with a method to scenario plan with immediate feedback. 

The data that drives the visualisation is also able to be viewed via a web interface, developed in the ReactJS web development library, which allows for graphs of factory utilisation to highlight where there may be any emerging issues, such as under or over-allocation of space or resource.

The developed toolset as a whole is deployed into a collaborative environment utilising Nakama, a real-time connectivity platform,  to synchronise users across the 3D visualisation and web interface. Multiple planners across facilities and products can input and see the impact of changes immediately.

Result 

The AMRC team has successfully created a software toolset that enables the company’s planning and monitoring processes to be more streamlined, which can now be conducted within minutes in real-time – compared to previously, where it could have taken days or weeks for the actions to have been completed. 

It means that teams at the company are able to come together to collaborate on plans and reduce the time taken for new scenario planning when adjustments are made to a plan, helping to build stakeholder confidence in the planning process. 

In addition, it provides a whole new way for the team to work, with output capabilities that span from shop floor to the top floor, ensuring both engineers and senior leaders and managers are being provided with the information they need. 

Impact 

The impact of this innovation and its ability to speed up activities, has been described by one senior stakeholder at the company as ‘transformational,’ saying it will ‘change the way things come out of the facility’.   

By speeding up the planning activities, the company will now be able to plan for more wide-ranging scenarios, improving the resilience of the industry whilst left shifting the engineering lifecycle. It enables greater foresight and facilitates getting work done right first time, reducing material waste and energy from re-work as well as the significant effort that comes with corrective action.

The toolset that has been developed provides a step change in the confidence the business can have in its planning processes. It means more predictability in the output of facilities, which means the business and its customers can plan accordingly. The nature of these customers means that a reliable plan helps shape the strategic roadmap and provides a better indication of what options are available in the defence sector.

The toolset has the capability to span multiple sectors, improving the planning process in each. 

With this greatly more efficient process, the planning team can prepare for a vast number of new scenarios. It also provides the many different facilities a way to plan together and speak the same language, which is a key factor that helps increase confidence in the planning outputs.