Planning consideration for manufacturing execution
Supply Chain Management contains planning tools to be used by supervisory personnel. The planning tools are helpful and time-saving for long-term planning. You can use the tools for planning work tasks and absence, and changing employees' work time profiles or work tasks for a specific time.
Example
Several employees are taking a three-week vacation in July. To save time and improve planning in the summer months, supervisory personnel should register the vacation beforehand instead of providing absence information on daily, during calculation and approval.
The primary tools for planning ahead are:
Profile calendar - Connect profiles to employees on specific days.
Work planner - An add-in tool to the profile calendar, which enables supervisors to plan two or three-shift teams for the weeks ahead.
Special days - Set up events for days that cannot be considered ordinary working days, for example national holidays.
Planned absence - Schedule absence information in advance, for example vacation or long-term illness.
Scheduled loan - Move employees to other calculation and approval groups for a limited period.
Resource scheduling
Resource scheduling enables you to deploy your organization's resources efficiently and effectively when they are needed. Before you can run schedule resources, you must set up and define the resources, resource groups, resource capabilities, and resource requirements.
Calendars and resources must be set up in the Organization administration module before using the Production control module. Resources are the physical equipment (more generally referred to as the "resources") that are used to create finished items. Because capacity on resources is limited, the time that the resources are available (their "working times") must also be considered when you are assessing the amount of time it will take to complete the item.
Operations resources
Operations resources are the resources that are used to complete the production processes. They can be machines, tools, locations, people, or vendors that contribute to the production of an item or to completing a project. Open Organization administration > Resources > Resources to set up and maintain resources.
Operations resource properties are unique attributes that you can assign to your resources for use in the scheduling process. Properties that you set up can be assigned to working time templates in the Working time templates page.
A capability is the ability of a resource to perform a given activity that is relevant to production and the scheduling of resources for production.
Capabilities are assigned to an operations resource. A resource can have more than one capability assigned to it and a capability can be assigned to more than one resource. Capabilities can also be assigned to resources temporarily, by defining a start date and expiration date on the capability assignment.
Capabilities that have expired on a resource will prevent the resource from being scheduled for production if the production requires that capability. A capability that has expired can be subsequently renewed.
When defining resource requirements for a production route, you can specify one or more capabilities as requirements. When production scheduling is performed, the capabilities that are defined in the resource requirements on the route operation are matched with the capabilities that are defined for the resources. The resources with capabilities that satisfy the requirements are then selected.
Asset management capabilities
When using the production floor execution interface, as described in the next unit, it integrates with the Asset management module, providing visibility of the state and health of an asset.
From the My machine tab within the interface, you can read values of up to four selected counters, lists of recent maintenance requests, and lists of registered downtime for the asset. You can also request maintenance for the asset, and register or edit machine downtime. This visibility provides managers and schedulers information about the asset that should be considered in the manufacturing planning process.
For example, when the scheduler is working on the long- or short-term manufacturing plans, they should consider any downtime that an asset or machine may have scheduled for routine maintenance.
Resource groups
Create resource groups before creating the operations resources that you will use in your production. These groups should be organized according to the logic and complexity of your manufacturing environment. The operations resources in a group should perform similar functions and share similar attributes so that they can be used interchangeably during scheduling.
For example, you can group machines and machine operators that do the same type of work at the same capacity in one group, and then group machines and machine operators that have other skills and capacities in another group. When you schedule production, you can select any machine or operator in the group to perform the operation.
You can also use resource groups to manage system information. For example, if you post a particular resource group to the ledger, you do not have to post financial data for each of the operations resources individually.
Master planning
Master planning allows companies to determine and balance the future need for raw materials and capacity to meet company goals. Master planning assesses the following information:
Requirements for completing production(s)
Raw materials and capacity that is currently available
The needs of the company (such as what must be manufactured, purchased, transferred, or set aside as safety stock)
The Master plan calculates net requirements. It is based on actual current orders and enables companies to control inventory replenishment on a short-term, daily basis. It can also include a forecasted demand. Another term that describes the Master plan is "Net requirements plan."
Production scheduling
You can run scheduling after the production order has been created and estimated. Running the scheduling process raises the production order status to Scheduled. Because the production cycle is sequential, if the production order has not already been estimated before it is scheduled, an estimation of the projected cost is run automatically.
Scheduling is an important step in the production's life cycle, whether production is run in-house or outsourced to a subcontractor or vendor. Scheduling is an iterative activity that involves coordinating complex elements of the production process to find the most optimal delivery date.
The following are the main production scheduling concepts:
Scheduling options
Scheduling levels: operation scheduling and job scheduling
Scheduling direction
Finite and infinite capacity
Efficiency
Finite materials
Resource allocation
Gantt charts in connection with job scheduling
Reschedule a resource
Reschedule a job or operation
Reschedule an order
Cancel scheduling changes
Managing outsourced production schedules by using subcontractors