Because working in the Live Scenario can get confusing if multiple people are making changes to the schedule. You can therefore have as many What-If scenarios as you want, and the actual or Live Scenario will remain unchanged until you have determined which scenario you want to convert to the Live Scenario. To avoid confusion, all What-If Scenarios are watermarked with “What-If Scenario” so as to not lose track of which Scenario the scheduler is working in.
Advantages of Working in a What-If Scenario
Although the unlimited Undo/Redo functions allow the Live Scenario to act somewhat like a perpetual What-If, What-If scenarios are particularly helpful in multi-user situations where changing the Live schedule is liable to distract or confuse other team members viewing or working within APS at the same time.
Beyond being simply a tool to facilitate collaborative efforts between multiple users, What-If Scenarios are essentially an open sandbox. Every dockable pane in APS is tied specifically to the scenario being presented, allowing us not only to make any change we want in APS, but also see how they effect our Capacity Plan, Inventory Plan, and Impact Analysis.
Useful changes to simulate in a What-If Scenario would be:
- Changing Optimize Rules
- Changing Release Rules
- Adding Overtime Capacity Intervals
- Adding additional Jobs
- Adding Resources
- Determining where and when to schedule maintenance for Resources
Comparing and Converting Scenarios
APS can support any number of What-Ifs and has the ability to compare them across a number of KPI’s. This way, the planners and schedulers can compare things like the number of late deliveries, any increases in operating or inventory costs, daily revenue, daily units produced etc. Once a decision has been made about which proposed Scenario to put into effect, the What-If Scenario can be converted into the Live scenario with a click of the mouse. There can only be one Live scenario at a time. Converting a What-If to the Live Scenario Converts the original Live Scenario into a What-If.
Note: What-If Scenarios are completely independent from one another and there is no way to combine the changes of What-If Scenarios. If one user converts his What-If to the Live scenario, and another user does the same afterwards, the first user’s changes will be lost.