August 2025 I visited China to meet up with some of my Chinese colleagues, to have workshops with one of our customers who uses DELMIA Quintiq and Apriso. Quintiq is used for Master Production Scheduling and Detailed Scheduling, and Apriso is used for the Management of Manufacturing. Quintiq sends the schedule to Apriso, and Apriso gives Quintiq feedback on the progress of operations. The customer is now looking to extend the use of our solutions to other parts of the supply chain.
It was really nice to find out that the book that I wrote together with recently retired Ton De Kok is well used by our colleagues in China. I was asked to sign a number of copies while I was in Nanjing. It shows that this book that came out in 2018 has not lost its relevance and is still used to guide the implementation of Advanced Planning and Scheduling tools.
https://lnkd.in/eGq7RPA
The book brings together several perspectives on how to design and implement planning tools. The research done by Ton has resulted in a planning model that overcomes some of the shortcomings of Material Requirements Planning, which is still the dominant planning algorithm implemented in today’s ERP systems. It became clear that APS systems do not only fill the gap of capacity planning – a well-known shortcoming of MRP – but also the lack of correct material coordination.
I was impressed by China and the advances it has made in the past decades. And it is good to see that our book is put to good use to improve manufacturing efficiency and effectiveness.