Dynamic Production Scheduling for Bio-Diesel Plant
The Challenge:
A bio-diesel manufacturer with 3 production lines struggled with manual scheduling across varying feedstock availability (used cooking oil, animal fats, vegetable oils). Production planners spent 2.5+ hours daily creating schedules, resulting in 22% downtime due to feedstock shortages and suboptimal batch sequencing.
The Solution:
Deployed Power Apps production planning interface integrated with inventory systems, using Power Automate to trigger schedule adjustments based on real-time feedstock deliveries. Power BI on Fabric analyzed historical yield data by feedstock type, providing AI-recommended optimal batch sequences via Azure OpenAI.
Result:
Production downtime reduced from 22% to 7%, planning time decreased from 8 hours to 45 minutes daily, and overall plant utilization improved by 31%. Annual production capacity increased by 2.4M liters without capital investment.