Advanced Planning and Scheduling or Rate Based Planning is a Lean Mixed Model planning tool for highly flexible one piece flow manufacturing.
It assumes that if you have a mix of model numbers and a limited number of producton lines that you will want to run multiple models down similar production lines that are capable of handling the requirements.
It requires that TAKT times for jobs be similar model to model and that tooling change overs are limited and can be done or staged to minimize set up and change over times (SMED).
In many cases dissimilar manufacturing process are done offline and merged into the line at strategic points to balence the line time when nessesary.
The idea is that if you have large items to manufacture, such as Marine Engines or Large Pumps that you can run any number of models down the same production line and make the work and workers flexible. If this can be achomplished you can build to order and minimize inventory, batch processing of materials and create one piece flow with a variety of products to Lean Out the production process.
Hope this helps.
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