Success story
Campaign Planning
in the Supply Chain
Build optimized multi-line production campaigns that reduce changeovers, maintain production continuity, and adapt as operational priorities change.
for production plan refinement
across 9 production lines
generated in minutes
Rulex helped a leading Mexican brewery optimize production campaign planning across nine production lines, each with its own material and packaging requirements.
Switching between products could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 16 hours – making sequencing decisions critical to keeping production running smoothly.
By optimizing how products were grouped and sequenced over a one- to four-week planning horizon, Rulex helped minimize disruption and support production continuity.
Balancing changeovers and production continuity
To optimize production assignment and sequencing across the lines, Rulex built a configurable model in Excel using its business-readable syntax, without custom programming.
The logic incorporated:
- Line priorities.
- Scheduled maintenance windows (typically every 5-7 days).
- Interdependencies between production lines.
- Simultaneous capacity limits for specific line groups.
Rulex’s horizontal optimization task, the Build/Solve, then used these inputs to model the planning requirements and generate feasible campaign schedules across all nine production lines.
Adapting the plan to changing priorities
The company could adapt the optimization strategy depending on the planning objective:
Continuity-first planning
This strategy prioritized continuous production and reduced unnecessary gaps between runs.
It then reduced changeovers while accounting for line and staffing constraints to keep operations running as continuously as possible.
Rapid plan generation
This strategy focused on producing a feasible campaign plan more quickly.
Materials were first assigned to the most appropriate lines according to business priorities, after which the model worked to reduce changeovers and production gaps.
Some staffing and line-usage requirements could be treated as preferences rather than hard constraints, giving the solver more flexibility to shorten optimization time.
Building a four-week campaign
The four-week planning horizon was built through sequential weekly optimization. The final state of each week was carried forward as the starting point for the next, helping preserve production continuity between weeks.
The process delivered measurable improvements:
- Plan refinement reduced from 3 days to 45 minutes.
- Average weekly changeovers reduced to 6.75, against a target of 15.
- Feasible plans generated in minutes or within 1-4 hours, depending on the chosen optimization strategy.
Tech point
Take a closer look at the Rulex Platform capabilities behind this campaign planning solution.
01. Flexible optimization with the Build/Solve task
Rulex Platform supports complex campaign planning problems through user-friendly, configurable optimization models.
This flexibility comes from the Build/Solve, Rulex’s general-purpose optimization task. It supports continuous and integer decision variables, letting users define multiple objectives and constraints in configurable spreadsheets using business-readable syntax – no formulas required.
Once business logic and data are connected, the Build/Solve constructs and solves the optimization problem, using either proprietary or third-party optimization algorithms selected according to planning priorities.
For campaign planning, this flexibility makes it possible to change the optimization focus without rebuilding the entire solution.
Why Rulex for campaign planning
Production priorities change. Rulex lets planners adjust objectives, constraints, and their relative importance within the same configurable optimization model, so campaign plans can evolve with real operating conditions.
Explore more supply chain case studies powered by Rulex Platform
Detailed Scheduling Optimization
Managing multiple constraints and preferences with no formulas or scripts.
Optimize Production and Workforce Planning Alongside APS
Supporting planners with a unified scheduling solution.
Optimize Inventory Replenishment Alongside APS
Flexibly automating planning decisions, including exceptions
Frequently asked questions
How does Rulex optimize campaign planning?
Rulex uses its Build/Solve task to model production objectives and constraints, evaluate alternative plans, and identify the optimum one using proprietary and third-party optimization algorithms. Objectives and constraints can be defined using business-readable syntax.
How can Rulex reduce production changeovers?
Rulex evaluates different ways to assign and sequence production on each line. By favoring combinations that require fewer disruptive transitions, the campaign plan can reduce changeover time without sacrificing production continuity.
Can Rulex support different production planning priorities?
Yes. Different optimization strategies can be configured depending on the objective. For instance, one strategy can prioritize production continuity while another can generate feasible plans more quickly by applying priorities and controlled trade-offs differently.