PLANNING

Control, planning and simulation are crucial elements for the proper approach to issues concerning planning and production control.

Checking the status of batch processes and the ability to predict and prevent delays, for each computer center is essential for the optimization of the production processing of information systems.

This analysis may also lead to a revision (planning) of the priorities and the optimization of the services through the relocation of non-essential processes whose current requirements create unforeseen issues or delays in critical flows.
In this context, it can add a further requirement, the ability to verify a first glance (simulation) at the impact of changes and/or additions of new processes within the current production batch flows.

THE PLANNING SOLUTION

Planning is the complete solution to track and predict the trend of the batch production environment.
It is part of an essential management tool solution to understand in advance what will happen in the next production cycle and to identify impacts or potential delays in the batch processing flow.
Planning has an effective Web interface that eases management tasks by simplifying the control and management of batch processes, planning and simulation activities, which includes any combination of the processing units in high-level objects, such as phases, macro-phases or services.
Planning can constantly interface with the client’s automated scheduler and the z/OS operating system, providing updates with displays of current activities of which the frequency is determined by a user-defined refresh rate.

This view highlights the activities already completed, those being processed, and those still to be executed, providing advanced information about any deviation from the planned schedule.

The deviation is calculated based on the data detected by a powerful feature of mathematical- statistical and behavioral analysis based on the observation of every historical object along with its database being continually updated.

OBJECTIVES AND FUNCTIONALITY OF PLANNING

Planning, thanks to the connection to most of the commonly used automated batch scheduling systems, has the ability to capture in real time the effect of a delay on the conclusion of all the processes needed to reactivate a service or line of business.
The product can combine schedules into high-level objects according to a user customizable data model.It is also possible to focus, in a single view, various individual critical points of the current scheduling plan usually defined as a target or cut-off and linked to specific time constraints.
This makes it possible to monitor a small number of objects rather than the individual processing units contained in them – of which however it is still possible to view every detail – thus giving an effective and targeted action through various points of observation of the entire work plan:

  • Line of business: impact on individual customer services
  • Functional: the identification of the impacted application area
  • Operational: real-time control of the overall work

Thanks also to its powerful function D.O.C.  (Delay Origin Causes) the user is greatly aided in quickly identifying the root cause of any reported delay, even well in advance, thus allowing the user to intervene in time to remove or mitigate any potential negative effects.

Lastly, the sophisticated alert system of Planning is virtually activated on all the information that the Planning tool analyzes and controls, allowing easy integration with popular automated systems or communication processes (email, SMS, etc.)

BENEFITS

  • Constant monitoring and alerts of batch production processing flow
  • Forecasting and early warning (alerts) of any deviation of the actual processing flow with respect to the planning or any pre- defined cut-off, so the user can take action before the delay can result in any negative results or loss
  • A quick overview of all the processes to monitor, through the creation of high-level objects, so the user can summarize in a few control units the monitoring of all critical or essential services