This company has released Version 2.5 of its Oritames Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) system (photo), which incorporates autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for improved planning and schedule optimization, as well as improved modeling of sequence-dependent setups, batching and time constraints. Oritames APS Scheduler v2.5 is platform-agnostic, running on MS Windows, Mac OS and a variety of UNIX and Linux platforms. It can be used as a standalone application or it can be integrated with other enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution systems (MES) tools. It can be used offline, online and in real time, and its parallel, multi-threaded solvers ensure that it quickly creates optimal scheduling solutions. According to the company, the new system is capable of handling multiple instances of equipment, people, consumables, tools, locations and so on. It can also combine several resources together, and any activity can have multiple modes to closely model reality. It also supports the selection of multiple objectives and multiple criteria, such as cost reduction, throughput, resource utilization or consumables usage, combining several key performance indicators (KPIs) together, producing optimal schedules and analyzing objective trade-offs and “what if” scenarios. — MangoGem S.A., Brussels, Belgium