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Plan faster, more flexible and cost efficient

Smart planning with TOF Planner AI

Every company has challenges regarding planning limited resources like skilled employees, machines, vehicles and raw materials.
We help you solve them with our smart planning solution: TOF Planner AI.

Combine the speed, business agility and integration possibilities of the Mendix low-code platform with powerful, continuous learning Artificial Intelligence algorithms to solve and optimize your complex resource and task planning.

React quickly to market changes and opportunities, reach a higher output, better margins and happier employees.
Fully customize your optimized planning solution and go within mere weeks from idea to production!

Request a demo!

Why smart planning matters

Deliver better results with smart planning

Multiple global trends are currently changing the way businesses develop products and provide services.
An efficient planning makes sure you can adapt and react to market changes and new opportunities quickly.

Good planning leads to higher productivity and less wasted time, money and resources.
Smart planning takes planning a few steps further and takes on these trends to put you ahead of your competition.

Meet changing consumer demands

Consumers have higher demands than ever. Products and services have to be tailored to their specific wishes, have to be of high quality and delivered quickly.

Smart planning enables you to deliver value ‘first time right’. Match their demand intelligently with your supply. React to changes in real-time, calculate theoretical scenarios and create new plannings on the fly, regardless whether you have 1000 employees to be planned or 100.000.

Deliver better value, faster.

Produce and deliver in a sustainable way

Both consumers and producers emphasize the importancy of sustainable production and delivery of goods and services. Businesses want to adhere to internal and external ESG goals and certifications.

Use smart planning to maximize your employee and asset utilization, minimize lost time, energy and cost during production and delivery of products and services. Minimize travel distance and CO2 emissions.

Deliver sustainable value.

Take care of your skilled employees

There’s a shortage of skilled employees in every market. Those in your service might move on or retire and take lots of knowledge, skill and expertise with them. Happy employees will work for you longer.

Smart planning takes into account ‘soft’ variables that matter to them such as preferred (part time) working times, types of work, amount of travel, etc.

Match customer demand with your supply in a smart way to prevent overtime, rework and automate administrative tasks so they can focus on what they do best: deliver skillful work.

Deliver human-centered value.

Make better, data-driven decisions

Planning challenges have become more complex due to many factors like supply chain disruptions, material/hourly cost and the immense amounts of available data.

The human mind can only process so much data regarding available resources, their performance, data regarding tasks that have to be performed and rules and regulations that have to be followed.

Using smart planning, your planners are supported by modern technology which provides them with an optimal planning, but also trends and correlations in data. This supports faster, more efficient decision-making and helps identify and analyze risk factors to provide mitigation strategies.

Make better decisions with the right data.

what is smart planning?

Smart Planning: Core concepts

Task

Something that needs to be performed in a timely manner like a service request, order or work order.

E.g. Work a shift in a hospital / warehouse / factory, produce a batch of items, repair or construct a machine, perform an inspection, etc.

Resource

Something or someone with a specific skillset that can perform the Task. Usually, there is a limited number of Resources available.

E.g. Specialized employees like a certified doctor / nurse / mechanic / auditor, a specific machine, vehicle or piece of equipment, a unit of raw materials, etc.

Business Rule

A rule specific to the company that needs to be adhered to, regarding Tasks, Resources or other hard (limiting) and soft (preferences) constraints.

E.g. Restrictions on work – Task X needs a mechanic with certification X
– Restrictions on planning – Follow the maximum no of hours according to local labor laws
– Order – Perform Task Z2 before Z1
– Etc.

Priorities

The planning can be optimized to fulfil specific priorities, like
– Maximize number of end products / maximize monetary gain of a production shift
– Maximize utilization of a resource / minimize the amount of travel time / distance between tasks
Or even a combination of priorities.

Smart Planning

The TOF Planner AI solution helps you to create an optimized planning based on your Tasks, Resources and Business Rules, while optimizing for your Priorities.

Your Planners will always be able to override the generated results for full control.

You can directly carry out the most optimal planning, or simulate multiple scenarios so you can quickly analyze results, determine trends and bottlenecks and optimize for instance by hiring temporary employees or prioritizing high-value work orders.

smart planning with low-code and artificial intelligence

TOF Planner AI features

Works out of the box, fully customizable

A big difference with existing planning solutions? TOF Planner AI is fully customizable to your business processes!

TOF Planner AI’s front-end is built in the Mendix low-code platform for maximum development speed, flexibility, security and scalability.

TOF Planner AI’s back-end is fully customizable too and can run on your own server, private or public Cloud or hosted in the TOF Cloud.

Run your planning solution as you see fit!

Seamlessly integrate with existing systems

Integrate with any external system like ERP / CRM / WMS / PLM / MES / MOM systems, Excel / CSV imports etc. to retrieve Tasks and available Resources.

Process and register completed Tasks in the correct systems of record.

You can even automatically Tasks based on:

– Work rosters
– SAP WBS information
– IoT sensor data
– PLC data
– etc.

Desktop app to plan and schedule

The user friendly desktop interface enables Planners to create optimized plannings and calculate possible scenarios and their effects on your operations.

Planners can always manually override generated planning for full control, then generate a new planning on the fly.

Mobile app to perform work and register

The mobile app provides employees with everything they need to perform their work: an overview of their tasks for the day, instructions and manuals, driving routes and automated time registration.

Let your employees work hassle-free and focus on what they do best.

Continuously improving AI planning engine

The results of generated plannings can be evaluated and fed back to the TOF Planner AI to enhance and optimize future planning results.

Plan smarter, better and more efficiently over time!

Solve complex business rules and scenarios

Load prebuilt sets of business rules like labor laws / CAOs to quickly setup your planning engine.

Need any custom business rule? You’ll have it in a matter of days.

Any upcoming rule or regulation? Develop and test it fully before it takes effect so your company is fully compliant.

Get started within weeks

Plan faster, more flexible and cost efficient in no time. Go from idea to production within several weeks with the fully integrated TOF Planner AI solution.

CUSTOMER CASE

A large, international manufacturer of elevators uses TOF Planner AI to assign the right elevator mechanics to maintain and service their elevators worldwide. Through smart IoT-sensors, they know which elevators and which parts need to be serviced and when.
TOF Planner AI helps this customer prevent elevator downtime and provide better services to its customers, while minimizing travel distances and CO2 emissions.

Reference case – coming soon

How can TOF Planner AI enhance your business?

Some examples.

Workforce Planner

Schedule your employees to carry out work for your customers or your own organization. Take into account available vehicles, tools and other resources they need to perform their work.

Schedule employees directly or in groups and shifts, allowing for backups in case of sickness, holidays and other unplanned events. Plan your employees in combination with vehicles and tools for maximum efficiency.
Create an optimal planning according to your customers needs, like certifications, security clearing, opening hours, employee seniority, etc.
Take into account your employees needs such as minimizing travel, scheduling work during their preferred time slots and other preferences.
Simulate multiple scenarios such as holiday seasons to determine if you need to hire temporary employees and immediately see the financial results.

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Production Line Planner

Optimize production of goods throughout a factory or production process. Take into account real-time stock, order books and plan across multiple factory lines, locations and teams of skilled operators.

Optimize factory lines to produce products based on orders, available raw materials and available operators.
Integrate with ERP, CRM and MOM/MES systems to schedule and maximize production per shift.
Combine with RFID technology to plan, schedule and produce, but also track and trace products throughout a production process and its physical location within a factory or building.
Provide metadata to be used during production like 3D-models and detailed instruction manuals, as well as after production like warranty certificates.
Maintain compliancy to security procedures, laws and regulations.

Field Service Planning

Build, repair and maintain assets in a structured way, but react quickly to ad-hoc tasks like breakdowns to prevent mechanical breakdowns and SLA violations.

Create the optimal work schedules for your employees that are constantly on the road by planning by day, by the hour or even trigger a new planning manually.
Integrate with ERP systems like SAP and Oracle to create Digital Workorders, retrieve Bill of Materials and simplify time registration by linking work performed to Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) items in SAP automatically.
Combine with smart IoT sensors to enable predictive maintenance and make sure your mechanics can fix the problem ‘first time right’ with the least amount of travel and number of inspections needed.
Extend the mobile app to include customer signature after task completion to prevent disputes.
Combine historical data with real life measurements to estimate and finetune how much time specific tasks will take in combination with travel time, enabling you to help solve tasks within SLA constraints, saving money.

Vehicle Routing

Create optimal routes for vehicles and delivery at single or multiple destinations. Minimize travel distance, number of vehicles on the road, CO2 reduction or gasoline/electricity costs – it’s up to you.

Create an optimal loading plan for spatial dimensions of each individual vehicle, from bicycle courier to truck to shipping container.
Integrate with real time traffic services to react to situations on the road in real time, offering full flexibility.
Combine with IoT and RFID to add on vehicle tracking/condition measurement, parcel/delivery tracking and tracing, automatic loading/unloading registration, etc.

Stay ahead of your competition!