Do you have visibility of your production assets?

The factory has been loaded with production orders, but there are several questions I may need to ask, for example:-

  • Do I have visibility of how the resources (machines and tools) are being used?
  • What if a production order has to be moved, is there enough capacity?
  • Are there any alternative resources and whats the impact?

The first screen shot, highlights the three production orders on Mixer 01 have been scheduled correctly according to the resources, capacity calendars and required date. The capacity line at the bottom of the screen (in green), highlights there are no capacity issues.

The second screen shot, illustrates the impact of moving the production order, the capacity for Mixer 01 is now overloaded (in red). To resolve this conflict, the alternative resources are highlighted, and the production order “dragged” to Mixer 03, an alternative resource, and the time to perform this operation has increased.

The final screen shot, illustrates by moving the production to the alternative resource Mixer 03, the capacity for Mixer 01 is now balanced, but the scheduled end date of the production order is now greater than the required date, so the order is late (red icon).

Backflush, or not to Backflush machine and labour hours, that is the question?
Scheduling – a solution for improving on-time customer deliveries