# Integrated Multilevel Production Planning Solution According to Industry 5.0 Principles
## 3 Integrated Production Planning System According to Industry 5.0 Principles
### Identified Challenges [66; 68; 69]  
The lack of visibility of where each transformer was in the manufacturing process was seen as one of the biggest challenges of the current period. There was also a need to optimize the transitions between each manufacturing stage. For example, it sometimes happened that due to replanning during production, there was no possibility to coordinate efficiently the plan to have congestions, especially in the testing lab.  
The laboratory could only test one transformer at a time due to its size and complexity. On the contrary, there was sometimes a long interval between one transformer leaving the testing lab and the next one arriving.  
This inefficiency was mainly because the production plan of each transformer was contained in its own independent file, which was not connected to other business systems. Thus, if someone were to change the schedule for one transformer, the business information system would not adapt to it.  
The company also had limited visibility into the effect that new orders would have on existing production plans or on the staff resources available for future orders. Furthermore, company management wanted to make this information available with at-a-glance dashboards to a wide range of internal users (potentially up to 1000) (Figure 1).  
Through the provided interviews and gemba walk, several characteristics of the production planning sector were made clear, and those led to a lot of time and energy waste.  
1. There were multiple (not connected) plans in multiple departments (Figure 2).
2. Rewriting plans between different program planning systems.
3. There was no interface with ERP and other systems (feedback).
4. The publication of plans took a long time and was demanding and complex.
5. Changing plans and keeping them aligned in all concerned areas required extra effort (feedback).  
Multiuser operation was not possible (Figure 3).  
7. Plans and files were shared by file server paths (slow, fault-intolerant, old-fashioned).  
The specific goals of the company were to increase efficiency in its core processes by the digitalization of production planning as follows:  
Centralized and easily accessible data for all users and roles preventing double work and data inconsistency.  
Data are structured and harmonized equally for each individual project. This would prevent comparing \"apples and pears\".  
Connection to other systems via defined rules and connections using standard software for interface jobs.  
Adding a time component to material structures in the ERP system.  
If publishing plans is easy, production disruptions become easier to handle because replanning cycles are faster and more transparent.  
User-friendly, previously used, and familiar software interface, flexible to customize without coding.  
The ability to easily create different filtered views, landscapes, and operational Gantt charts.  
The possibility of simple data outputs and exports for processing and analysis (fast and graphically appealing reports).  
The foundations of the new system should be on accumulated knowledge and their own solutions based on previously known system philosophy.  
To decrease the learning curve and reduce implementation time and investment, research was conducted to develop a simple system with already available (or similar) tools that would have all the characteristics of an Industry 5.0 production planning system.