Factory Planning & Scheduling

Blue Yonder's Factory Planning & Scheduling gives manufacturers more productivity, control and prioritization through production scheduling. It decides what the factory floor should work on and in what order, so that planned output matches what the plant can actually produce. Blue Yonder presents the product as one piece of a wider supply chain platform instead of a standalone program.

Seeing problems before they reach the line

The vendor's approach rests on forecasting. The platform is designed to let planners see potential problems in advance, receive machine learning based recommendations, and change the plan in time to deliver. For a plant, that means a late material or a shifted order can be weighed against the schedule before it turns into downtime. Blue Yonder says its artificial intelligence and machine learning produce over 20 billion predictions every day across the platform, and describes the technology as scalable, transparent and explainable.

Part of a connected platform

Scheduling sits within a suite that Blue Yonder describes as running from the first mile to the last mile and back. Alongside production work, the suite includes supply chain planning, retail planning and category management, order management and commerce, returns management, warehouse management, transportation management, workforce and labor management, and a supply chain command center. A common data cloud lets users view inventory movement and align plans across all tiers and trading partners, from raw materials to the final customer.

Visibility and control tower tools

Related products widen the view beyond the factory. Luminate Control Tower is described as a way to analyze and respond to spikes in demand while keeping availability up and waste down, with visibility across the entire supply chain. Luminate Logistics provides planning through to execution for flexible, autonomous distribution networks, and the vendor says it helps organizations recognize problems before they occur and minimize risk.

The vendor

Blue Yonder calls itself the AI company for supply chain and sells to manufacturers, retailers and logistics providers. Its network of trading partners lets plans and actions be shared in both directions in real time. Sustainability is also in scope, since carbon, waste and ESG risk figures can sit beside cost and service when everyday supply chain decisions are made.