Camelot Campaign Planner & Designer

The Camelot Campaign Planner & Designer is a SAP-certified solution, seamlessly integrating with SAP S/4HANA PP/DS and extending the supply planning capabilities of SAP IBP via synchronized planning. The Camelot Campaign Planner & Designer is available on the SAP Store.

A production campaign is a structured approach to managing manufacturing activities. It involves a pre-defined production sequence designed for a product portfolio, taking into account optimized changeover (e.g. by times, cost)and batch size optimization. This approach works by combining the future demands of product families. Parameters such as campaign size can be set individually per product group.

The Product Wheel (aka ‘Rhythm Wheel’) concept introduces an innovative approach to lean production planning and scheduling. The concept steps in when a production line needs to handle a variety of products with high demand variability and limited capacity. It allows for a production mix to be leveled and sorted based on the products’ requirements. This process runs on a rolling basis, ensuring there’s ample time in each cycle to manufacture less frequent products or conduct maintenance tasks. The concept promotes leveled capacity utilization, inventory reduction, and enhanced customer service levels.

The Rhythm Wheel concept manages the production of a mix of different products on the same manufacturing line through a combination of key practices:

• Campaign Size Definition: It sets minimum and maximum sizes for production campaigns
• Recurring Production Cycles: It establishes consistent production cycles for a defined cycle time
• Automated Planning and Prioritization: In cases of over-capacity, it uses automated rules to prioritize production
• Optimized Changeover Times: By reducing changeover times between different products, the Rhythm Wheel concept maximizes capacity utilization.

All features of the Camelot Campaign Planner & Designer support the Rhythm Wheel concept: The Designer feature creates the campaign; the Campaign Planner Heuristic feature conducts the production planning and scheduling based on the design, and the Campaign Monitor supports the analysis of the planning steps and decisions enabling future improvements.

Planning production campaigns with the Camelot Campaign Planner & Designer enhances supply chain efficiency in several ways. First, cyclic planning stabilizes the supply chain by funneling and dampening the volatility of demand signals from the market. By organizing production in production campaigns, the solution effectively streamlines the bullwhip effect, which usually destabilizes production planning at upstream stages. In addition, the Camelot Campaign Planner & Designer minimizes changeover times, which results in higher capacity utilization and ultimately, greater supply chain efficiency.

The Campaign Designer functionality of the Camelot Campaign Planner & Designer comprehensive view of complex product portfolios, displaying key parameters like run rate and lot size for each resource. It is capable of grouping and sorting diverse product ranges by factors such as minimum changeover times. Users can define campaign sizes and set prioritization rules, guiding the heuristic to plan effectively in different scenarios, such as bottleneck situations and periods of lower demand.

Yes, campaign designs can be adjusted interactively to accommodate significant changes in demand or unexpected disruptions. Moreover, the campaign planning heuristic dynamically adapts to the latest inventory, production, and demand situation during each planning run, using an advanced netting logic based on traditional MRP netting.