Make Effective Scheduling Decisions at the Sharp End

ERP Systems produce the schedule: sometimes only at a high level leaving the tactical allocation of orders to lines and sequencing to planners at the factory. Other times the schedule is detailed and needs to be communicated to the people running the line. Even then, problems can arise, for example breakdowns; unforeseen materials shortages; staff shortages; in which case orders have to be rescheduled.

To compound matters, in some cases the Operatives at the Line have some discretion to change the execution order and do so without understanding the knock on effect.

Deviations from the schedule for whatever reason can be very disruptive. Bringing forward one job can rob materials for others, or reduce time for others, impacting the ability to meet the delivery dates.

In the many cases there is very little in the way of tools to support the planner, more often than not planners are taking extracts from ERP and planning in tools like Excel. Whilst easy to use it is not so easy to share with many users and not so easy to access.

The Scheduling Module of Shopfloor-Online MES provides an easy to use tool for local planners to visualise and manipulate the schedule as required. It is also a means to communicate to the production lines the planned, current schedule.

With the Production Scheduling module you can:

• Add orders manually or download orders from an ERP system
• View the schedule as a list or as a Gantt chart
• Predict order completion dates and test against due date deadlines
• View material requirements to run each order
• View material availability to run the order (when using the inventory modules you can see what you have in stock)
• View orders with common aspects, e.g. products that share a common attribute (colour, size, material) - which is often how schedules are built up to minimise change-over time.
• Reschedule orders to run on different lines or a different place in the sequence, after which the effect on the schedule is instantly recalculated
• The schedule is live; any changes to the schedule are immediately reflected at the line, so operators always know what should be running next.
• If live production counting is being recorded in Shopfloor-Online then it will automatically calculate the progress of the current job, update the projected completion date and update all queued jobs accordingly. So if a line is stopped for a while you can instantly see if it will cause any scheduled order to be late.

Shopfloor-Online MES is a web-based, server-based architecture, no software is installed locally. It is enterprise wide solution that is particularly resilient and easy to manage.

Increasingly factories want to track KPIs like conformance to schedule and conformance to demand. This means combining the schedule with actual; execution information, like when the job actually started and stopped.

Benefits In Time

The key benefits are:

• Greater visibility of the schedule to local planners and the line operatives
• See if any jobs, anywhere in the queue will miss a deadline
• If decisions are taken tactically, planners have the tools to make better decision and see the impact of rescheduling. This means better scheduling decisions and faster reaction times.
• Instant communication to the lines, all changes come though instantly
• Live update of progress and ability to assess the impact on the schedule

When the Scheduling module is used in conjunction with other modules of Shopfloor-Online MES more opportunities open up. For example:

• Link with ERP systems (e.g. SAP, Oracle) to download the schedule
• With Inventory modules view material requirements and material availability
• With live production counts get a real-time update on progress of the current jobs, a reassessment of when they will complete and the knock on affect on the plan