Siemens Opcenter APS vs DELMIA Quintiq: Packaged Scheduler or Planning Platform for a Metals Business?

What Opcenter APS does well

Preactor was a mature scheduler long before Siemens bought it. When the deal was announced in June 2013, Preactor's software was reported as installed at more than 4,500 companies in 75 countries. Today it sits under Opcenter, Siemens' manufacturing operations portfolio, next to MES, quality and manufacturing intelligence.

The product line is clear about what each edition does. Advanced Scheduling comes in Standard, Professional and Ultimate. Standard handles sequence-dependent changeovers; Professional adds rules such as preferred sequencing, changeover minimization and campaigning; Ultimate adds a developer license and a read-only viewer. Advanced Planning builds a master production schedule from forecasts, stock and rough-cut capacity, in finite or infinite mode. There is a free edition, Preactor Express, and a free trial of Opcenter Scheduling. It can run standalone or connect to ERP, MES, data collection and OEE systems.

What DELMIA Quintiq does well

Quintiq's founders started in 1997 with a scheduling application for an aluminum manufacturer, and metals has stayed a core market. Dassault's metals page covers work order planning, rolling mill sequencing, sales and operations planning and margin-led planning, on a live model of orders, capacity, inventory and logistics it calls a supply chain virtual twin. Execution runs through DELMIA Apriso.

Its strength is fit. A hot strip mill, a cold mill and a finishing line have constraints that rarely match a packaged scheduler's assumptions, and Quintiq is built to be modeled around them. Dassault claims average results of 20% less inventory, 75% fewer late orders and less manual planning, and 20% lower overall cost, without publishing baselines. Its published metals case studies include Elval and Symetal, both aluminum producers in Greece.

Where both stop short on a coil line

Opcenter APS schedules jobs on resources. The Preactor page does not describe choosing coils for orders, generating cutting patterns or measuring trim loss, and the metals case studies we found are a Slovenian maker of welded and sheet metal parts and an aluminum extruder. If you run a slitter, it can sequence the jobs once someone has decided what each job is.

DELMIA Quintiq's metals page talks about mills, not processors. The only service-center mention we found is a 2008 trade piece listing service-center scheduling tools among Quintiq's applications. Whether it builds slitting patterns for you depends on what your implementation models, and the current page does not describe a ready-made slitting optimizer.

Four metals scenarios

A fabrication shop with lasers, brakes and weld cells

This is Opcenter APS territory. Routings, shared resources and sequence-dependent changeovers are what the Standard and Professional editions are built for, and Siemens has published a case study from Metal Design, a Slovenian maker of welded assemblies and sheet metal parts.

Sequencing a cold mill by width, gauge and grade

Rolling sequences follow physical rules, such as width transitions and gauge steps, that are specific to the mill. Quintiq's metals pitch names rolling mill sequencing directly. Opcenter's campaigning and changeover rules could be configured toward it, though we found no rolling-mill reference from Siemens.

A slitter and a cut-to-length line at a service center

Neither product describes the pattern decision: which widths come off which master coil. Both can sequence the resulting jobs. A service center would still need a dedicated optimizer or an experienced planner to decide what gets cut before either one sees the job.

Planning across several plants and a sales plan

Quintiq covers S&OP and financial-first planning across a network. Opcenter's Advanced Planning builds a master production schedule and recalculates it from the detailed schedule. Siemens describes it in terms of capacity, stock and demand rather than margin trade-offs across a group of plants.

Pricing and getting started

The free edition makes Opcenter far cheaper to test. That says nothing about which one fits a mill; it only means you can find out sooner with Siemens.

Can you use both?

In a large group, yes. A producer could run DELMIA Quintiq for mill and network planning while a fabrication or forming subsidiary runs Opcenter APS on its own shop. Inside one plant, two schedulers for the same machines is a recipe for arguments, so pick one.

The bottom line

Opcenter APS is the practical choice for a metal fabricator or former that needs a finite-capacity scheduler with a low-cost way in. DELMIA Quintiq is the choice for a producer whose mill planning needs a custom model and a supplier with metals history. If your real question is how to put more of every coil into orders, read LineSight vs Siemens Opcenter APS, where we cover the cutting decision that sits before scheduling.