"We are constantly confronted with conflicting interests in companies. On the one hand, production, which has to process its production orders on time and as quickly as possible. And on the other hand, maintenance, which wants to see its maintenance requirements met," begins Gerd Rücker, Head of Sales at Becos. This is precisely where the MES expert comes in and tries to reconcile both sides with a comprehensive and transparent planning basis and ensure smooth production while taking maintenance orders into account.

This area of conflict is not new, but is becoming an ever greater challenge for manufacturing companies due to increasing cost pressure. Currently, maintenance in most companies is carried out according to different planning specifications - for example, cyclically according to fixed maintenance intervals or as dynamic planning when previously defined threshold values are reached. The next step is intelligent maintenance, which will certainly be able to plan itself independently in step two or three with the help of AI. "By connecting sensors, it is already possible to know the degree of wear and tear on tools and machines and thus plan the necessary maintenance measures in good time," says Rücker.

In addition to the technical solution components, Becos' tool focuses on the integration and interactive communication of all parties involved on the basis of comprehensive planning transparency.

Optimal allocation planning takes into account available capacity, delivery date, order priority, set-up time optimization, production progress, but also maintenance times. And this is precisely what the planning engine in becosMES integrates, which knows the decision criteria and plans the optimum sequence of all orders and the respective maintenance times in a short time. All permissible alternatives are taken into account. The result is a capacity-balanced allocation plan for all resources, taking into account the maintenance tasks. pb

becos GmbH was founded in 1987 as a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA). It is a provider of modern MES / APS and IoT solutions. Contact with universities and learning factories ensures the integration of new solutions and leads to the improvement of customer processes. More than 200 customers and 9,500 users, mainly in the manufacturing sector, work with becos solutions and appreciate the AI-based, interactive decision support through the evaluation of planning measures.