Preactor 500 APS takes materials control a step further.  It has an Advanced Material Control (AMC) feature. In this, materials can be produced or consumed at any operation step within an order.

This means that both by-products and co-products can be modelled in Preactor and used as constraints.

Preactor 500 APS also has a BoM exploder (PBX) that can be used to carry out Bill of Material explosions during a Capable to Promise Enquiry. 

The PBX is not aimed at replacing an MRP module in an ERP system.  It is used on an ‘ad-hoc’ basis where the user wants to find an achievable due date for an order that has one or more products (multi-line orders are supported) that has a multiple level BoM.

When the enquiry is run the user enters the product, quantity, customer etc.  Preactor then runs its BoM exploder.  It has the details of the BoM and routing within its own data tables.  Based on this it creates an order for each level of the BoM and adds the process route to each.

Next each order attempts to satisfy its material requirements by linking to available components such as that in stock or already scheduled to be purchased or manufactured. 

If no materials are available then it will link to materials in the orders created during the enquiry process.  Any of these orders that are not required (there is enough materials available already in the schedule file or in stock) then these are deleted.

Finally the operations of the orders remaining are added to the schedule taking into account the current load and all constraints and the finish date of the final product displayed.