The Benefits of Proplanner

Key Topics: Eliminate the need for excel with digital time study capabilities that save you time. Optimize production and minimize bottlenecks with superior line balancing tools. Increase quality with synchronized, up-to-date work instructions.

Proplanner: Process Planning Expertise at Your Fingertips

Discover the Missing Link to Digital Work Instructions

Join us for a live 45-minute webinar and discover how Proplanner is the missing link needed for true digital transformation and process planning efficiency.

Register Now

Purpose-Built for Complex Mixed Model Assembly

With Proplanner, improve efficiency, traceability, scalability, and accuracy. 

  • Expedite your process planning with predefined workflows – eliminating the need for Excel 
  • Centralize your production data and seamlessly translate data from the planning environment to the production environment 
  • Streamline your change management with synchronized work instructions 
  • Increase flexibility and speed-to-value with built-in APIs 

PLM, ERP, and MES systems are well suited for defining WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE products will be manufactured. Proplanner helps you determine the HOW by providing workflows that glue together the components of production. And because Proplanner is often complementary to other PLM/MES/ERP systems, you to create a fully integrated system using your existing solutions.

Save Time with Advanced Time Study Capabilities

Are you still using excel to complete your time studies? Are you tired of time wasted on a manual process prone to errors?  

Proplanner enables you to easily conduct observed and calculated time studies – both live and video based – to support lean manufacturing. Our advanced capabilities make it easy to complete, access, and update time studies, as needed.  

Learn more about Proplanner. 

Improve Efficiency with Superior Line Balancing

Are you struggling with excess capacity, bottlenecks, and frequent downtime?

Proplanner’s line balancing module can quickly balance and visualize thousands of tasks, hundreds of models and options, and countless customer orders. This purpose-built solution can also satisfy the largest number of hard and soft constraints including Precedence, Resources, Workzones, Grouping, Ergonomics, Inspection, and Product Orientation.

Learn more about Proplanner. 

Increase Quality with Synchronized, Up-to-Date Work Instructions

Are you tired of constant rework and downtime due to inaccurate, static work instructions?  

Proplanner can auto-generate standardized, up-to-date visual work instructions for every model and option configuration in seconds – eliminating guesswork and minimizing rework. And with the ability to easily embed work instructions into your MES system, you can automatically apply changes in seconds.   

Learn more about Proplanner. 

Proplanner Training by Advantive

DDI System product screenshot 2

Access Proplanner Expertise Anytime, Anywhere

At Advantive, our team of Proplanner experts is committed to providing comprehensive support, offering various tools to inform, train, and educate you about our solutions and the challenges they address. From live phone and web support to onsite training, we ensure that you have access to the resources you need. Our website hosts reference and training documents, informative videos, and essential files, enabling easy access to information about our industries and partners, product support, system requirements, and licensing details.

At Advantive, our goal is to help your users quickly learn how to navigate Proplanner efficiently to maximize benefits. We cater to groups of varying sizes, offering both on-site and web-based training solutions. Collaborating closely with your team, we determine the optimal training strategy specific to your needs. Our approach is hands-on and efficiency-driven, designed to conserve your time and reduce rework, accelerating the production of tangible results.

To foster an interactive learning community, Proplanner has also launched a dedicated forum. This platform enables users to ask questions, join discussions, and share ideas, facilitating peer-to-peer learning and collaboration.

GO TO FORUM

Proplanner’s educational resources are aimed at helping users make the most out of these powerful software tools, ultimately improving productivity and optimizing manufacturing processes. Structured to provide both free and premium support to universities, these resources are ideal for learning how to maximize the benefits of Proplanner’s software suite to improve productivity and efficiency.

  • Free Subscription
    The free subscription equips universities with software licenses for Flow Planner, Workplace Planner, and ProTime Estimation. However, it’s important to note that these programs require users to have access to AutoCAD licenses, as AutoCAD Lite is not supported. Proplanner’s free resources also extend to technical setup and support, including educational blog entries and YouTube tutorials.
  • Paid Subscription
    For universities needing a more immersive training experience, Proplanner offers a paid subscription that includes everything in the free package along with 5 hours per academic year of access to their technical support team. This service includes installation assistance, Q&A sessions, and personalized demos. It also incorporates a range of custom webinars for classes, support for senior design team CAPSTONE projects, and 1-on-1 webinars for lab assistants, graduate students, and professors.
Discuss Your DDI System Training Needs

What to Expect

  • Honest conversation about your training requirements
  • Discover what training programs best fit your team
  • Instant access to free, on-demand product training and documentation

All-in-One Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software to Streamline and Integrate Product Development

loseup shot of a businessman analyzing statistics on a digital tablet in an office

Optimize Assembly Planning: Predefined Workflows for Guaranteed Results

Are you facing challenges in synchronizing your team’s efforts and ensuring efficient product development in your manufacturing processes? Whether you’re dealing with small-scale manufacturing projects or complex, multi-departmental production, PLM software is the key to aligning and optimizing your assembly planning. Our PLM solutions offer predefined workflows designed to guarantee results, ensuring that every team member is on the same page, reducing the time-to-market, and enhancing the quality of your products.

Enhance Collaboration and Communication

Facilitate seamless interaction and data sharing across various departments, enabling teams to work more cohesively and make informed decisions quickly.

Optimize Product Management

Streamline the management of product data, design, and development processes, reducing time-to-market and improving overall productivity and product quality.

Improve Strategic Decision-Making

Leverage detailed insights and analytics from product data to make strategic decisions, enhancing product development and lifecycle management, and ultimately driving business growth.

Powerful PLM Software Purpose-Built for Manufacturing

Advantive’s PLM software streamlines assembly planning by seamlessly importing the eBOM from your PDM/PLM system, along with any pertinent Engineering Change Orders, to detail necessary modifications. It enables manufacturing engineers to align the eBOM with existing mBOMs, identifying required adjustments to processes, shop floor instructions, tooling, and logistics. Changes are coordinated through Manufacturing Change Orders, specifying the effective dates and applicable series or serial numbers. Once the mBOM and BOP are reconciled within Assembly Planner, the data is efficiently published to ERP, logistics, and shop floor MES/Andon systems, as illustrated in our integration diagram. Proplanner’s flexible, client-centric PLM solutions adapt to various workflows, ensuring optimal lean production practices for your manufacturing needs.

Tailor your workflow for efficient manufacturing change management:

  • Define Specific Sequences: Establish clear steps for implementing diverse manufacturing changes.
  • Utilize Comprehensive Checklists: Ensure thorough execution of every aspect of the change with detailed checklists.
  • Assign Clear Roles and Responsibilities: Foster ownership and accountability among team members by defining roles.
  • Gain Enhanced Visibility: Keep track of change progress with a centralized dashboard.

Ensure Effective Planning for Released ECOs:

  • Create an MCO upon the release of a new product design or upon shop floor change requests.
  • Initiate a workflow to review and update process plans in response to requested changes.
  • Easily assign and monitor project queues for both teams and individuals.

Efficiently Reconcile mBOM and eBOM for manufacturing requirements:

  • Generate a detailed side-by-side comparison of the new eBOM and existing mBOM.
  • Easily identify differences with color-coded flags for quick attention.
  • Automatically pinpoint new system items or BOM additions.
  • Strategically plan inventory changeovers by identifying the last usage of items.
  • Seamlessly adjust quantities, set effectivity dates, and restructure items across operation sequence numbers.

Efficiently Manage Consumption Changes Driven by mBOM Updates:

  • Identify item consumption changes in process routings aligned with the mBOM.
  • Easily compare and locate differences between the mBOM and process library through a quick search.
  • Seamlessly integrate items into the routing using a user-friendly workbench that ensures alignment with the mBOM.
  • Streamline item relocation within the routing during task movement or line rebalancing.
  • Implement revision changes across all affected activities in response to ECOs.
  • Control ECO implementation with customizable effectivity dates, model specifications, and options settings.

At the core of Advantive’s PLM software solutions lies the vital concept of models and options, essential components in the production of intricate assembly products. Models typically encompass broad product types or families, while options denote specific features applied to these models, enabling extensive variation and customization.

While resembling sales configuration frameworks that govern feasible model and option combinations from an order and sales perspective, the utilization of models and options in process configuration serves a distinct purpose.

Each product model and option necessitate unique assembly processes. Some tasks may be applicable across multiple models and/or options, while others are specific to select models and/or options.

In Assembly Planner, this translates to streamlined operations:

  • Maintain a singular, adaptable process routing, filtered by model and option rules during inline balancing analysis, work instruction generation, and part delivery planning.
  • Capitalize on shared assembly tasks, eliminating redundancy by authoring tasks once and mapping them to all relevant model(s) and/or option(s), rather than duplicating and updating tasks across multiple documents.

Proplanner has extensive standard and custom reporting options. While we offer services to provide client-specific reporting and data exports, many clients can implement their own reports using our standard API’s and recent integrations to applications such as Power BI and Tableau.

One of our key data models is available in the open-format XML-based Scenario files, which is used extensively by the Assembly Planner application to share and store Line Balancing alternatives. This export contains detailed information on tasks, stations, variants (Models/Options), tools, components (3PR = Products, Processes, Plants and Resources).

Advantive’s PDM/PLM and ERP integrations can be handled via our extensive SQL-View, XML, or Web Service APIs.

  • ERP Integration: Advantive’s PDM API can support reading and writing both mBOM, Routing (BOP), and Order Build List data to and from all popular ERP systems such as Oracle, JD Edwards, SAP, and Mapics/Infor. Typically, our ERP integrations involve reading the Order Build List and writing out the mBOM and BOP Routing which manufacturing engineers author within Assembly Planner.The mBOM can be sent to ERP for a particular order configuration or as a collection of assemblies at specific versions and effectivity dates that correspond to change orders (either manufacturing or engineering initiated). In this way, Assembly Planner can reconcile and validate that BOTH the mBOM, and BOP Routing are reconciled to ensure that all process steps consume all components of the mBOM.The BOP Routing is typically exported at the Assembly Planner Operation or Station level of detail, which indicates the aggregated task times and component lists consumed on a station-by-station basis.
  • PDM Integration: Advantive’s PDM API can support reading CAD Model and Engineering Change Order data from any popular system such as Windchill, Teamcenter, and Enovia. This import includes graphical models but also the product structure and meta-data such as part numbers, revisions, descriptions, as well as Engineering Change attributes which specify added, removed, and replaced components with their respective quantities.


Proplanner data flows are shown between our PLM/MPM solution (Assembly Planner) and our MES solution (Shop Floor Viewer/MES) in coordination with a traditional ERP integration approach.

Speak to a PLM Software Expert

What to Expect

  • Free 20-minute call with a product expert
  • Live demo tailored to your industry requirements
  • Discover what products best fit your needs
  • No games, gimmicks, or high-pressure sales pitch

Proplanner’s Newest Features Enhance User Experience

Advantive is a trusted provider of specialty manufacturing, distribution, and quality solutions. We are committed to empowering businesses with practical tools and strategies aimed at driving success and enhancing efficiency. With the integration of Proplanner last year, we have enhanced our ability to provide end-to-end solutions that optimize efficiency, streamline processes, and drive success for … Continued

Connect with Advantive at NAFEM’s Annual Meeting and Management Workshop 2024

Join Advantive, David C. Greene, and Abishek Bandyopadhyay, for the upcoming North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers (NAFEM) conference at The DeSoto Hotel in Savannah, GA, from February 5 – 8, 2024. About NAFEM The North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers (NAFEM) represents 500+ foodservice equipment and supply manufacturers, and serves a mixture … Continued