Job Shop Scheduling: Interfacing just plan it With Your ERP System

We regularly face inquiries of people who either work with a (small) ERP system or have their job shop scheduling data organized in any other SQL database or alike. As just plan it just offers a standard interface to Microsoft Excel, folks then sense that they have to extract data from their ERP system/ SQL database, get it into Excel and from Excel to just plan it. Well, this is one way ;-) However, we now did a bunch of custom connections from an ERP system to our just plan it software, that we are happy offering such custom interfaces at a fixed price. And good news is: with these fixed price interfaces you can integrate a set of powerful individual business rules into the interface which will improve your job shop scheduling capabilities.

How We Define The Interface

Here is how these standard, but custom-built interfaces to your ERP system and/or SQL database are defined.

• The interface is unidirectional and read-only. It will read all data from the ERP system/SQL database which is required for the job shop scheduling according the standard just plan it data model. This data will be sent to just plan it. If data will be changed within just plan it (e.g. changes of dates), no update of the ERP system’s data will be triggered.
• We will install the interface software on a PC respective a Server PC of the customer to achieve the data transfer from the ERP system/ SQL database to just plan it. This ensures the connectivity between both systems. The data transfer mechanism is “push”, which means that the data transfer will be triggered by a (manual) start of the local interface software. Hence, the interface software provides the function “update just plan it with current data”.
• The interface will make sure, that it only adds incremental data to just plan it, i.e. those data which have been added to the ERP system/ SQL database since the last data update. 
• The access to the data is via ODBC.
• The interface comes with a maximum of five individual business rules. An “individual busines rules” shall be defined as such a case, in which 1 ... n data fields of the ERP system/SQL database will be transferred by programmatic rules and/or mathematical operations into one data field, which is required to operate just plan it. Data fields, which can get transferred 1:1 will not get counted as individual business rule. 

More Job Shop Scheduling Power: Business Rules

You sense it: the individual business rules can really further level up your job shop scheduling experience. The below are just a few examples of these business rules:

• A job marked as finished in the ERP system/ SQL database automatically is removed from the production schedule in just plan it.
• Automatically prioritize jobs in the way that those jobs get the higher priority of which the due date is closest to today.
• Differentiate customer orders and stock orders in your ERP system/ SQL database and automatically give customer orders a higher priority.

Interface Requirements

Sounds great? Here are the requirements that you need to take care of for the interface to work as described:

• The locally installed software requires a Windows operating system from version 7 (resp. Vista), and it required internet access.
• It is required that the customer provides a precise description of the ERP system’s database and/or data model – namely of those data from this system that are required to operate just plan it.
• We require a user with – at least – reading rights in the respective ERP system/ SQL database.

Fix Price Offer

Here is the good news: independent of your ERP system and independent of your SQL database, we offer such a standardized interface at the fix price of EUR/USD 1,950.00. No tricks, no small printed clauses. Transparent, clear and one fix price.

Your Next Step

Ready to go? Have questions? Want to discuss connecting your ERP system/ SQL database to just plan it? Talk to us: we are happy to help.