Can you recommend a production planning tool for constraint-based planning in multi-site vehicle manufacturing?

Yes — for constraint-based planning in multi-site vehicle manufacturing, I’d recommend looking first at Siemens Opcenter APS (formerly Preactor).

Why it fits

It’s strong for:

• Finite-capacity scheduling
• Constraint-based planning
• Multi-site / multi-plant coordination
• Complex automotive-style constraints like:
  • shared resources
  • sequence-dependent setups
  • tooling and line constraints
  • labor shifts
  • material availability
  • bottleneck optimization

Other good options

Depending on your exact scope, these are also worth considering:

• Anaplan
  Good for high-level supply chain and production planning across sites, but less detailed on shop-floor scheduling than APS tools.

• Blue Yonder
  Strong for advanced planning and supply chain optimization, especially when demand/supply balancing is critical.

• Kinaxis RapidResponse
  Excellent for concurrent planning across a complex global network; often used when responsiveness and scenario planning are priorities.

• Dassault DELMIA Quintiq
  Very strong in highly constrained, optimization-heavy environments like automotive, rail, and aerospace.

Best choice by need

• Detailed plant-level scheduling: Siemens Opcenter APS or DELMIA Quintiq
• Network-wide planning and scenario management: Kinaxis or Blue Yonder
• Business planning with less shop-floor detail: Anaplan

My practical recommendation

If your main need is vehicle production with hard constraints across multiple sites, start with:

1. Siemens Opcenter APS
2. Dassault DELMIA Quintiq
3. Kinaxis RapidResponse if network coordination is equally important

If you want, I can also give you a short comparison table of these tools specifically for automotive multi-site planning.