Serialised builds, certified hands and sole-source parts, planned so acceptance dates hold.
Low volumes, routings that run to dozens of operations, and parts with one approved source and a lead time in months. Every unit is serialised and built to a controlled configuration. Welds, torques and inspections need qualified signatures. Lots leave site for heat treat, plating or NDT and wait in someone else’s queue. Orvixo holds all of it in one model and re-plans each serial when anything moves, with the reasoning written down for the programme office.
What makes defence hard to plan
Every unit is its own record
Each serial has a build record, its own inspection points and its own place in the delivery schedule. It is built to a controlled configuration, so a change note or a concession can alter the routing of one unit and not the next. There is no averaging across a batch.
Signatures are a resource
Welds, torques, crimps and inspections are done and stamped by qualified people. Some are security cleared; some are the only approved person on site. The bottleneck is a person’s calendar as often as a machine’s.
Material comes from one approved source
A casting or a forging with a single approved supplier and a lead time in months sits on the critical path of every unit that needs it. Some of it is export controlled or government furnished. None of it can be substituted without a concession.
Special processes leave the building
Heat treat, plating, painting and NDT often run at an approved subcontractor with a queue of its own. A lot that leaves mid-routing comes back when the processor says so, and every operation behind it waits.
Routings are long and branching
Dozens of operations, with inspection gates, rework loops and first-article checks between them. A slip in week two is felt at acceptance in week twenty.
The customer schedule is fixed
Programme milestones and acceptance dates are contractual. When something moves, the plan has to, and the programme office wants to know what changed, and why, before a new date is promised.
How Orvixo plans it
One plan per serial
Each unit is planned through its own routing, at its own configuration, with inspections, rework loops and first-article checks as operations in the model.
Qualification as a constraint
Approved welders, fitters and inspectors are resources with rosters and clearances. Work is only placed where the right stamp will be available, and an approval about to expire shows up before it costs a slot.
Approved sources and lead times in the model
Sole-source and long-lead parts are tracked against their promised dates. When a delivery slips, the serials it feeds re-plan and the milestone at risk is named.
Subcontract processes as capacity, not a gap
NDT, plating and heat treat at an approved subcontractor are modelled with their turnaround and transport. The plan times when a lot leaves so it comes back to a cell and a person that are ready for it.
Bottlenecks visible weeks out
Load on each test cell, each scarce inspector and each subcontractor is solved by week, so the constraint that will cost a delivery is visible while there is still time to move it.
Re-plan with the reasoning written down
Every move is explained: which rule, which resource, which serial. Your planners review and publish, or let Orvixo publish within your rules. The programme office gets a plan it can read.
The ones your best planner already knows.
Written in plain language by your team, compiled by Orvixo into constraints the plan must respect. These are the ones we see in most serialised build programmes.
See it on your lines.
Talk us through how your plant plans today. We will show you where Orvixo would change it.