Phoenix APS vs Seiki Advanced Planning and Scheduling

Phoenix APS helps planners build feasible production schedules across machines, people, and tools while accounting for calendars, setups, dependencies, and material availability. It enforces capacity limits on machines, lines, and human skills, and models parallel, alternative, and sequential routings at operation level. Machines, operators, and equipment can be scheduled together. Calendar handling includes closures and working-time changes, while dependencies support finish-to-start relationships with configurable lags. Material checks use bill-of-material availability with Fixed or Proportional quantities and AtStart, Uniform, or AtEnd laws. Planners can change assignments and rules to see the impact; infeasible jobs can be parked with reasons and retried using targeted relaxations. The interface includes a Gantt timeline, operations table, quick filters, and a what-if solver. HTTP JSON endpoints let ERP or MES systems send master data and retrieve dated plans. The maker describes the approach as heuristic and rule-based, aimed at fast, explainable feasible plans, with optimization modules on the roadmap. A free beta evaluation installer is available for Windows, but its temporary license does not permit production use. The project is described as personal and non-commercial.

Seiki Advanced Planning and Scheduling, also called Seiki Scheduler, builds manufacturing production plans around actual capacity to balance delivery dates and workload. It schedules operations against available resources and supports real-time adjustments. An interactive graphical planning board summarizes active order loading and operation details, while built-in sequencing rules provide a baseline that planners can refine. Users can model schedule changes and compare saved snapshots before choosing a plan; running scenarios and saving snapshots for evaluation requires the optional Simulation license. Seiki EAI connects the scheduler to ERP, MRP, PLM, and other databases, with one-way or bidirectional transfer. SQL views and CSV files are described as import methods. The Scheduler can also operate without ERP, using manually entered works orders and routing templates. It supports finite-capacity scheduling, machine and labor capacity planning, and material constraints. Seiki says it can handle tens of thousands of operations, though saving changes takes longer as the database grows. It is licensed per resource, with no stated cap on resource count. Seiki AIR runs in a browser and supports self-hosted web server or Microsoft IIS deployment; Windows is also listed. Pricing is available on request.