Manufacturing has been undergoing a significant change over the last decade. The change could be characterized by a large and more diverse product mix with smaller batch size and shorter lead times. To compete effectively, excellent customer services must be delivered while keeping the price low. Therefore, you need to carefully control and utilize your resources effectively, improve your delivery performance, and reduce setup and production time losses. Hence, the production planning and scheduling function have become more critical and challenging. Many of today's scheduling professionals are feeling the need for a computerized decision support tool to assist them in managing the complex set of inter-related constraints. The effective management of these constraints is a vital key to success in today's competitive environment.
The main objective of advanced Planning and Scheduling System, is to take over the tedious manual-scheduling task.? It is an     automatic planning and scheduling system that can be used to generate the daily production schedule. It will:
Provide realistic commitment to customer forecast
Meet production demand requirements based on the planner’s input parameters;
Synchronize WIP with demand to lower inventories;
Identify and eliminate idle labour and bottlenecks;
Achieve various stated objectives such as maximization of line utilization, minimization of in-process WIP, etc.;
Create consistent line load schedules; and
Available to promise / capable to promise.

iDimension have two APS soloution; iPASS and Preactor cater for different industrial needs. iPASS is focussed on Semiconductor FAB and Backend Scheduling needs while Preactor is for general industries such as EMS,PCBA,etc.

IPASS models the production floors and performs the desired planning and scheduling tasks. It has the capability to model both the single-stage and multiple-stage production environments, while integrating the planning and scheduling modules in a single platform to ensure that shop floor resources are working on the right customer orders at the right time.

IPASS consists of four main modules - Capacity Planning (CP), Daily Lot Release (DLR), Daily Production Scheduling (DPS) and Dynamic Operation Scheduling (DOS). Among these four modules, the CP and DLR are designed for planning purpose and the DPS and DOS for detailed scheduling.

A Family of Advanced Planning & Scheduling Solutions, Preactor comprises a family of advanced planning and scheduling solutions from comparatively simple finite schedulers to advanced planning and supply chain solutions.