CRP - Capacity Requirement Planning / News: Recent posts

We have ceased the development of CRP Capacity Requirement Planning. The main reason being that the Java based application framework that is the basis for our development has proven to not be production ready. So far we were not able to find a suitable substitute that would give us the functionality that we strive for.
Please see Frepple (http://www.frepple.com/), our partner project for a mature capacity planning solution.

Substantial work on the data model has been going on silently in the background resulting in the implementation into this release. Some of the main chages include distinction and grouping of resources and products, customized attributes modeling for resources and products, and product relations along the production routing. Besides “standard” relations, the model also provides mechanisms for modeling exceptions on the product-resource and product-route relationships. The parametrization of the resource and capacity model is strongly supported through customizeable and coded attribute categories. Further model customization possibilities are present and are documented in the release notes and solution documentation.
The present solution provides a clear division into master data, business logic, and results keeping by separation into distinct packages. This approach allows for substituting the existing components and integrating external business logic algorithms or results data warehousing into the solution. Besides a model calculation component, a primitive validation component has been added. Both will be subject to enhancement in the upcoming versions.

This version is not about colossal changes. A new approach has been taken in dividing the solution into two independent components. While the crpmodel package is the fundament for the resources master data, and the capacity results, a new package “crplogic” is responsible for handling the business logic and calculation algorithms. Correspondingly, the two new classes “Loading” and “Execute” have been placed in the “Results” folder. On the execute class, a context menu “Calculate Loading” will process all demand quantities for products with respective process plans, operations, resource groups, and process times, and store the results per product, operation, and resource group in the “Loading” class.... read more

After some months of apparently low activity, another, much improved version, is ready for your trial. While we are developing a more extensive data model in the background, the time became ripe to do another release and share a preview of where the development is heading.
The first great improvement is due to the extensive enhancements and stability improvements in the jMatter framework, in all its possible aspects, from persistence through class manipulation to visual functionalities.
The second improvement is in the area of data models. Simplifications to the plant / workcenter relations have been done. The resource model was enhanced by resources and resource groups. And the demand is now not only global, but can be related directly to work centers.
While we were not able to include all our model developments into this release, we will certainly do this in the not so far future.
For detailed description of changes, please see the release notes in the documentation.
Enjoy this new version.
Yours pyramid

After a slow-down in coding and modeling activities during the holiday season, another version of crp capacity was released today.
Changes are in majority in the data model:
-Added resource priority modeling to operations
- The same allows for definition of alternative and simultaneous resources (see documentation for details)
-Updated documentation
-Added work center and enterprise classes
-Update to jMatter revision 307 from 2007-01-03

We have activated the SVN repository to hold fresh unreleased code. Revision 2 represents the development version from 2006-12-24. Merry Christmas!
You can find information on how to access the repository under the code/SVN menu.

Another release that was planned for the beginning of this week is delayed. An issue with creation of new objects from the class bar or browser window was found. Though it materializes only on windows systems, I am putting my efforts primarily in helping resolve the issue in the jmatter framework (http://jmatter.org/), which is the basis for the application user interface.
Upcoming changes that were already implemented in the development version are the modeling of resource priorities, and simultaneous or alternative resources.
Documentation enhancement are on the way and will be included in the upcoming version 0.04.... read more

Today, a new distribution was released including source, jar build, and documentation.
The main feature added is a date selector that allows to choose between a named calendar or an absolute effective date for demands, process times, process plans, installed machines, and manufacturing availability.

Donations are accepted now via the sf.net or the project web page. Please support us in this effort. Your contribution helps extending the support to various platforms and creates a strong motivation to continue with the development.

Today a basic documentation for CRP Capacity version v0.02 has been released. Besides a small overview of the solution, it contains installation instructions, release notes, and information on the development environment.

A new distribution package with many improvements, mainly to gui and framework has been released. Installation instructions and release notes have been included into this release.

The CRP- Capacity Requirement Planning sourceforge site has been set up. Preview version v0.01 has been released, and the project web page installed.