🔷 “Still using spreadsheets to plan production and materials? Ortems is your next step forward.”
In earlier posts, we explored 3DEXPERIENCE DELMIA for digital manufacturing, and DELMIA Apriso, the “brain of the factory” for managing real-time operations.
Now, let’s talk about planning, specifically how to plan smarter before anything even hits the factory floor.
That’s where DELMIA Ortems comes in.
🔄 What is DELMIA Ortems?
DELMIA Ortems is Dassault Systèmes’ solution for Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) and Master Production Scheduling (MPS).
Where Apriso focuses on managing production as it happens, Ortems helps you answer critical questions ahead of time:
- What can we actually produce next week?
- Where are our resource constraints?
- How do we respond to a sudden change in demand?
With Ortems, you move from guesswork and spreadsheets to real-time, constraint-based scheduling based on finite machine, labor, and material availability.
It’s a shift from reactive to proactive.
🧠 In Plain Terms
Ortems helps teams get organized before the work begins.
It connects your planning to reality by aligning schedules with:
- Available machines and capacity
- Operator availability
- Material flow
- Order priorities
- Shifting customer needs
If you’ve been juggling these manually in Excel, Ortems gives you a way to optimize and simulate — not just react.
👥 Who Uses Ortems — and Who Needs to Understand It
🛠️ Typical users:
- Production Planners
- Plant Schedulers
- Materials Managers
- Supply Chain Analysts
- ERP and MRP Specialists
These are the teams using Ortems daily to align materials, people, and capacity with what needs to be produced.
But for Ortems to make an impact, you also need support from key decision-makers and systems integrators:
📈 Influencers and enablers:
- Operations Leaders driving throughput and delivery KPIs
- IT/ERP Managers integrating systems and data
- COOs and Transformation Leads building more agile production ecosystems
- Plant Managers who need flexibility when plans change
🧭 If you’re responsible for syncing what’s needed with what’s possible, Ortems belongs in your toolkit.
❓ When to Consider DELMIA Ortems
✅ You’re still managing production schedules in spreadsheets
✅ Your ERP planning tools aren’t responsive or detailed enough
✅ You’re missing delivery targets due to planning breakdowns
✅ You don’t have visibility into real-time capacity
✅ You’re constantly reacting to unplanned changes
🧭 How to Get Started
If Ortems sounds like a fit but you’re unsure how to begin, here’s a proven approach:
- Start with the pain points: Look for chronic rescheduling, missed deadlines, or poor inventory accuracy.
- Map your current planning tools: What’s handled in ERP? What lives in Excel? Where are the gaps?
- Bring in both operations and IT: Success requires cross-functional alignment — planning, execution, and systems.
- Pilot a focused use case: Start with a single line, product family, or plant to prove value.
- Leverage what-if simulations: One of Ortems’ strongest features is its ability to model multiple scenarios before you commit to a plan.
You don’t have to rip and replace. Ortems fits into your existing systems, bringing clarity and responsiveness to a process that’s often too manual and too siloed.
🔁 Next up:
👉 Post 5: What is DELMIA Quintiq and How It Can Level Up Your Supply Chain
We’ll expand beyond the plant floor to look at how DELMIA Quintiq optimizes the entire supply chain, from suppliers to delivery.