Asprova APS Production Scheduler

Asprova Corporation is a Japanese software company established in Tokyo in February 1994. It develops Asprova, an advanced planning and scheduling (APS) system that helps factories build realistic production schedules under machine, labour and material constraints. Asprova states that it holds the largest share of the production scheduling market in Japan, with more than 3,300 sites using it across 44 countries.

The software uses finite capacity scheduling to create schedules at high speed and shows them on Gantt-style views from the current shop-floor state to months ahead. It handles setup times, mould and cavity limits, tank capacity, JIT delivery and make-to-order bottlenecks, and exchanges data with ERP and production control systems through differential import and export. Users include Panasonic, Hitachi, Yamaha, Pentel and Magna.

• Finite capacity scheduling: builds schedules at high speed against real machine and labour limits.
• Visual management: Gantt and load charts from today's shop-floor status to several months ahead.
• Industry constraints: models setup times, moulds and cavities, tank capacity and next-resource rules.
• Delivery date quotation: supports available-to-promise and quick, accurate due-date answers.
• System integration: differential import and export with ERP and production control systems.
• Global support: multilingual sales and support network with more than 30 partners.

An injection moulding or wire harness supplier in Vietnam can schedule moulds, cavities and setups to meet JIT orders from automotive customers. An SMT electronics plant can sequence PCB jobs to cut changeovers. A beverage plant can plan filling lines around tank capacity and bottle size changes.

Published case studies report large planning gains: Hitachi scheduled 100,000 jobs in 90 seconds and cut planning time from 26 hours to 4 hours; Panasonic halved order lead time from 2 weeks to 1 week; Yamaha reduced scheduling time, lead time and WIP by about 30%. Shorter lead times also lower work-in-process inventory and improve delivery date quotes.

Japanese, Korean and other foreign-invested factories in Vietnam and Thailand face high-mix, low-volume orders and tight JIT delivery from automotive and electronics customers. Moving from spreadsheet scheduling to APS that sits between ERP and the shop floor is a common step in their smart factory programmes, and local suppliers are increasingly asked to match these practices.

Asprova Corporation (capital 20 million yen) is headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo, with sales contacts in the US, Germany, China, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. In Vietnam it lists resellers including Mankichi Software (Vietnam), Kanto Bussan VN, SystemEXE Vietnam, Unitec Solution Vietnam, Innove PLM Solutions and Solpac Vietnam.