Dr. Hugo Zupan, univ. dipl. inž., Digiteh, d. o. o., Ljubljana in Univerza v Ljubljani, Fakulteta za strojništvo; prof. dr. Niko Herakovič, univ. dipl. inž., Univerza v Ljubljani, Fakulteta za strojništvo; mag. Aleš Vovk, univ. dipl. inž.; GOinfo, d. o. o., Nova Gorica

Ventil 32 (2026) 3 / Review articles / Technical article – 1.04

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5545/Ventil-32-2026-3.25

Abstract​:
In modern manufacturing, competitiveness is no longer determined solely by production quality, but by a company’s ability to manage a complex combination of orders, deadlines, materials, machines, people and other limited resources quickly and reliably. This is precisely where traditional ERP systems often reach their limits. An ERP system effectively stores and structures data, but it cannot independently understand production constraints, predict the consequences of decisions or generate a feasible production plan in real time. For this reason, a digital twin was developed as an active planning layer above the GoSoft ERP system. Its role is not merely to display the current state of production, but to enable the automatic calculation of a feasible production plan based on data from GoSoft, technological procedures, capacities, available resources and constraints. Such an approach is applicable to various types of production, from discrete, project-based and small-batch manufacturing to serial or highly variable production. The digital twin enables the calculation of a plan for approximately one year of open operations in less than 20 seconds and allows immediate evaluation of different production scenarios. In this way, the planner does not lose their role; rather, they are freed from routine manual plan generation and moved into the role of a decision-maker. The result is more stable planning, more reliable delivery dates, less urgent replanning and better utilisation of production capacities. The article demonstrates how a digital twin above the GoSoft ERP system can connect production data, rules and constraints into an operationally usable planning model, providing manufacturing companies, regardless of industry, with better insight into future workloads, bottlenecks and risks.

Keywords:
digital twin, ERP, GoSoft, production planning, automatic planning, artificial intelligence, bottlenecks, Gantt chart

Copyright (c) 2026 Hugo Zupan, Niko Herakovič, Aleš Vovk

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