APS vs Excel Challenge

Compare Your Real Production Plan Against MSF APS

Not a slide-deck demo. We load your actual open orders, work centers, changeover matrix and capacity constraints into MSF APS and run it alongside the plan your planner already produced for the same week — then compare both against the same measures.

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What this checks

For a planning team that is not sure a planning tool would beat what an experienced planner already does in Excel, or whose memory of a past planning-software attempt is that it produced a plan nobody trusted. This challenge answers that question with your own data rather than a vendor scenario.

What we do

Load one representative planning horizon — your real open orders, routings, work centers and changeover matrix — into MSF APS.
Run it against the same constraints your planner is already working with for that period, not a simplified case.
Measure planner hours spent building and re-building the plan, and compare schedule KPIs (on-time completion, changeover time, overtime, work-center utilization) between the two plans.
Present both plans side by side, with the differences explained in terms your planning and operations teams already use.

What we need from you

A representative set of open orders and their due dates for one planning horizon (typically one to two weeks).
Current routings, work-center list and capacities, and your changeover/setup matrix.
The constraints your planner already works around informally — preferred sequences, material holds, tooling limits.
Your planner's own current plan for the same period, so the comparison is against what actually happened, not a hypothetical.

What you get back

Both schedules, side by side, on the same timeline.
A measured comparison of planner hours, on-time completion, changeover time and utilization — not a vendor claim.
A list of the constraints APS handled automatically that the manual plan handled by memory or a phone call.
A recommended next step: proceed to the full APS PoC, or a specific gap to close first.

What this does not claim

This challenge does not declare a winner before the data is in — a well-run manual plan can beat a poorly-configured automated one, and the comparison is built to show that honestly rather than to guarantee a result in APS's favor.

The Proof of Concept this leads to

Frequently asked questions

Do you need our machines connected for this?

No. This challenge runs entirely on planning data — orders, routings, constraints — with no machine or MES connection required. That is what the APS PoC itself is for, once planning is proven.

How long does the comparison take?

Typically one to two weeks: a few days to load and validate your data, then the parallel run against the same period your planner is already working.

What if our planner's current process is genuinely better in some ways?

That is a real, useful outcome. The comparison is measured, not scored to a predetermined conclusion — if the manual plan wins on a specific measure, that becomes part of what the APS PoC scope is built to address.

Request this Proof of Concept

Tell us the scope you have in mind and we will come back with a written PoC plan: what gets connected, what you provide, how success is measured and what the decision at the end looks like.