FrePPLe aims at building a lightweight open source framework that easily and quickly delivers a solution for production planning problems. The initial focus is on small to medium sized planning problems for the discrete manufacturing industry.
Production planning software traditionally has been an area with plenty of
home-grown, extremely specialised and/or very primitive solutions.
Strangely enough, while creative and innovative open source solutions pop up
in all computing areas, production planning software still tends to be a very
closed world full of academic, proprietary and expensive solutions.
Till now...
FrePPLe is the first open source production planning toolkit for your day-to-day
planning problems.
For the developer community, the project is also trying to establish a
common ground framework for planning applications. Rather than rebuilding the
basic foundation from scratch over and over again, developers can now leverage
a proven framework to extend with their own extension modules.
New workflows and functionality can now be built much quicker and easier.
The word "free" in the project name refers to liberty, not price. Think of "freedom of speech" rather than "free beer": see the free software definition.
The software is still young. The functionality and API are enhanced very quickly.
Plenty of feedback is required to move the project forward. So, browse the site,
have a look at the software and please mail
us your feedback.
While there's plenty of work left, the software is quickly getting into a state
where real-life problems can be handled efficiently.
FrePPLe has two main components.
The key features of each component are:
FrePPLe core library
Heuristic "MRP-like" solving algorithm respecting capacity, material and leadtime constraints.
XML-based data input and output, in addition to the public C++ API.
Extensible and customizable architecture.
New modeling constructs and solving algorithms can be developed in C++ and loaded as a plugin module.
Embeds Python as scripting language.
The embedded interpreter has access to the frepple objects in memory, combined with the
rich functionality of the Python libraries. The powerful combination allows flexible
and performant scripting, integration and customization.
Supported on Linux and Windows environments.
Licenced under the GNU lesser general public license.
FrePPLe user interface and database layer
A planning solution consist of much more than the core solver algorithms...
It includes data maintenance, reporting, data integration to other systems, workflows, job schedules, etc...
A front-end for the core library is required to meet these requirements with a maximum of flexibility.
Highly customizable and extendible.
The web application can be deployed on a web server, supported by a backend database.
It can also be installed as a desktop application for a single user.
Supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle and SQLite as the database.
Full support for internationalization and localization.
The user interface supports Unicode, allowing characters of any language to be handled.
Reports can be translated to the user's local language.
Supported on Linux and Windows environments.
Licenced under the GNU lesser general public license.
We need your help: developers, testers, writers, implementers and, most of all, users. No matter which 'er' you happen to be, or how much time you can provide, you can make valuable contributions.
Provide feedback:
Suggest a needed feature, report a bug, tell us what you think...
Spread the word:
Reference frePPLe on your site, suggest improvements to the website, use frePPLe in
your own projects, ...
Join in:
Review the code, fix a bug, improve the documentation, submit a test, implement a new
feature, ...