VirtECS and SchedulePro from Intelligen are two of the leading providers of planning, scheduling, and modeling services. These advanced tools address similar challenges that many manufacturers face in optimizing their processes and maximizing output.
However, VirtECS and SchedulePro are founded in distinctly different forms of technology. As a result, they offer several different features and benefits. To help your organization decide which tool may best suit your facility’s planning, scheduling, and modeling needs, we’re breaking down the biggest differences between VirtECS and SchedulePro.
Planning & Scheduling
At their core, VirtECS and SchedulePro are both manufacturing planning and scheduling programs, which means they can perform the same basic actions. Both offer the ability to schedule production activities, update the activity status, and publish the finished schedule to a webpage. They can also generate a sequential recipe of steps needed to complete a product batch.
However, there are several features that enhance the planning and scheduling process that only VirtECS can provide. For example, VirtECS offers the option to include maintenance activities in the schedule, which helps coordinate regular production activities around necessary downtime to prevent equipment breakdowns. With VirtECS, plants can also include their product changeover activities, optimize their solution prep scheduling, and account for level-loading of solutions preps within the schedule. These additional features help VirtECS create a more comprehensive schedule for the entire plant, which makes it an especially attractive option for plants in the highly complex pharmaceutical industry.
Modeling & Analysis
VirtECS and SchedulePro are both powerful tools when it comes to their modeling and analysis capabilities. Both programs will create a virtual model of your plant and quantitively evaluate its production performance to identify areas of improvement. They provide stochastic modeling, variability analysis, and can generate reports based on their findings.
The greatest difference in the modeling and analysis capabilities of the two tools comes down to the technology powering them. SchedulePro is run with discrete event simulation, while VirtECS utilizes math programming technology. To understand the difference between the two, consider a scenario where you’re running a path through a maze. SchedulePro’s technology will give you a first-person viewpoint as you work through the maze, while VirtECS will give you an overhead view of the entire maze at once. You can find out more about the unique advantages of math programming and pitfalls of discrete event simulation in our in-depth article.
Constraints
One major drawback of the discrete event simulation framework is that it can be difficult to include all the constraints present in a manufacturing environment. SchedulePro is able to incorporate basic constraints, such as equipment and product resource requirements, but with its sequence-based foundation, it struggles to accommodate particularly specific constraints that pharmaceutical facilities often experience.
This is an area where VirtECS excels. Math programming is a constraint-based approach to scheduling and can account for nearly any constraint your facility may have. As a result, the schedules VirtECS produces are more likely to be accurate because they include all the elements that affect production. VirtECS pharmaceutical clients often include constraints like clean/dirty hold times, material expirations, and upstream train selection.
Flexibility
In addition to missing key constraints, discrete event simulators like SchedulePro typically become very complex very quickly, and their setup can make it difficult to modify or change anything in the schedule. With each production activity you add, the timeline of events gets more complicated and bogged down, which makes accounting for flexibility or changes challenging.
On the other hand, the VirtECS framework is incredibly flexible. It allows for manual overrides, which plants will need anytime there’s an equipment breakdown or error. Once those changes are made, VirtECS can then automatically reoptimize and reschedule the subsequent processes to minimize the disruption to total output. In addition, VirtECS can track mass balances, schedule based on need, and provide real-time updates to the in-house production team.
Continuous Learning
In an industry like pharmaceutical manufacturing, new innovations are introduced constantly, and planning and scheduling tools must keep abreast of these changes to continue providing services that meet plants’ current needs. As of the publication of this article, SchedulePro has not been updated since 2019, which means it is missing years of developments and advances that have altered the way pharmaceuticals are created in many plants. Perhaps most notably, they’re missing updates based on the major changes made during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the need to look for unforeseen constraints and supply chain delays.
The team at Advanced Process Combinatorics, Inc. is committed to regularly releasing new versions of VirtECS. One major advantage of VirtECS is that it aggregates data from each schedule it produces, which means insights it learns from optimizing one plant will be used to improve scheduling at every facility that uses VirtECS. This includes manufacturers that use VirtECS outside of the pharmaceutical industry. In this way, plants using VirtECS can benefit from data it wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
In addition, VirtECS offers integrations with other programs frequently used in manufacturing facilities, such as MES and ERP software. When these systems can all communicate, it minimizes the need for data entry and ensures each program is working from the most current information.
If your pharmaceutical manufacturing plant is looking for a flexible approach to planning, scheduling, or modeling that can account for all production constraints, you’ll want to consider implementing VirtECS in your facility. To learn more about VirtECS’ unique approach to optimizing pharmaceutical plants, download our short guide here.
