People from all over Japan who use the production scheduler [Asprova] gathered at [Asprova User Group 2025], held on 14 th , November at Tokyo Midtown Yaesu.
The highlight of the event was hearing directly from the users themselves. With a bit of guidance from our staff interviewers, 2 veteran engineers in charge of production management shared their stories.
Improving Communication with the Shop Floor
Interviewer: Shogo Sugimoto (Production Scheduler in Shibaura Machine)
-Chiyoda, Tokyo
He talked about the new “My Schedule” feature, which is receiving positive feedback from customers.
“We have always struggled with effective communication on the production floor. Following the introduction of the scheduler, the primary challenge became how to effectively present the plan to the shop floor and ensure we captured their valuable feedback.”
At the 2023 User Group Meeting, I heard about the My Schedule development plan. It matched exactly what we needed, so we asked to run a PoC.
“We created screens, such as production instruction sheets, and made them accessible from our internal website, which immediately drew a positive reaction from the shop floor. The charts in the scheduler can still be complex and hard to understand. However, the ‘[My Schedule]’ screen is designed to be very clear, allowing users to see progress and upcoming deadlines at a glance and making it much easier to take action when needed.”
At Last, We Achieved Leveling
Interviewer: Hironaka (Production Scheduler in Kita Nihon Technos)
– Komatsu, Ishikawa
“I have been asking for production leveling for more than 15 years. President Tanaka even mentioned today that he visited our factory around 2009. At that time, I shared our needs, but the answer was simply, ‘It’s too difficult.’(Tanaka’s comments) So I’m very happy that it has finally become possible with the new Solver.
“In manufacturing, it’s hard to hire people because the work is tough. We also have trainees from other Asian countries. Many of them want two days off together, but they also want some overtime on weekdays to earn more. in order to support this kind of work schedule all year, our production needs to stay balanced.”
“Until now, we planned our production plan in Excel. but the file became so complicated that only one person could manage it, which was not sustainable.”
“When we thought about what kind of scheduler we truly needed, we realized it had to match the needs and working style of the people on the shop floor.”
“They wanted the workload to increase or decrease smoothly when looking into the future, and sometimes the daily production limit wasn’t even a whole number. And of course, we must meet delivery dates without exceeding our capacity.”
These requirements simply couldn’t be handled by the standard scheduler functions we had before.”
“Solver, developed as an optional feature of Asprova, was able to meet our needs. At first, we could build a plan that matched about 80% of what we expected. After further refinement and tuning, we improved it to the point where we could accept 99% of the results. That was when I felt we had finally achieved what we had been seeking for nearly 20 years.
“But there are still challenges. We need to prepare operation manuals and we are making it. However, I hope the fine one will be made automatically.”
“Now, the new ‘Tech Assistant’ helps a lot by providing instant answers, like a lifesaver. Still, there is room for improvement. I hope it will continue to learn and eventually support automatic BOM creation and automatic formula creation.”