By
Jyoti Tejpal
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Production Scheduling Software helps manufacturers in efficiently planning and organizing various production schedules. It assists monitor resource utilization and optimize production time to get maximum production capacity.
The solution also permits manufacturers to assign tasks to workers, check stock inventories, release bottlenecks, and manage many other aspects of the production cycle to get production a smooth run. It helps to forecast demands and plan the production cycle accordingly. The four components of production scheduling has the following:
Planning – The planning part of production scheduling is the most important. The planning component assists to deciding in advance what must be done in the future – which is the most crucial step in production scheduling. Without any planning, production scheduling can not even start or take place. Preparing a plan charts, budgets for production , and many other visual representations can give a sound basis for steps down the road pertaining to production.
Routing – Production routing is the process that pertains to determining the route or path that a product must follow. This route entails the path from raw materials until it transform into a finished product. The main objective of this component is to locate and perform the most economical and enhanced sequence of operations in the production process.
Scheduling – Scheduling goes with the time and date which is most important operation and must be completed. Scheduling is an important and critical portion of production scheduling and well lays the foundation and groundwork for all steps within the production procedure. There are three types of scheduling which must be utilized as operations like manufacturing or operation scheduling, master scheduling, and retail operation scheduling. Overall, scheduling is important for a manufacturing operation to keep pace.
Dispatching – Dispatching correlates to the procedure of starting production with a preconceived production plan. Dispatching is concerned with providing a practical shape to the overall production plan. This will also have to issue orders and instructions and other important information pertaining to production.
Production scheduling software provides manufacturers many benefits, not just in the production cycle but the whole business. Here are the primary advantages :
Automated scheduling: Setting up rule-based algorithms for automatically scheduling production plans based on resource availability and business demands.
Capacity planning: Determining the organization’s production capacity to get fluctuating demands met.
Material requirement planning (MRP): Allowing manufacturers to analyze material availability and planning future material requirements for completing orders.
“What-if” analysis: Helping production managers for analyzing potential production schedules and alternating approaches in case of the disruptive events and issues which may hinder production.
Change management: Analyzing the impact of disruptive changes in demand on production cycles and supporting change implementation.
Scheduling: Assigning schedules to workers and keeping a tab on the actual production for scheduling production operations.
Most products in the market are priced on a per month basis and can be divided into three pricing tiers based on their starting price. A premium product is priced higher include additional features like integration with core applications (ERP and CRM), management of backward production scheduling and multiple production sites.
Ease of use: Production scheduling solution can be used by anyone, from technically-sound production managers to technology novices. Because the manufacturing industry has a high attrition rate, the solution chosen should have a short learning curve and be easy to use. Participating in free trials and demos gives you a feel of the solution. You can even ask your employees to test and evaluate the tool before taking a decision.
Support and service commitments: Abrupt halts in the production cycle can result in huge losses. These could be due to the production scheduling software failing. That’s why we recommend choosing a vendor who is available for support when you need it. Ask your vendor about the support options before making a purchase decision.
Remote accessibility: Production managers and engineers need to constantly move around the work floor to ensure that machines and resources are working properly. To do that, they need production schedules and details in-hand all the time. Therefore, the software you select should be accessible on mobile phones and tablets.
IoT will positively impact production schedules: Manufacturers are implementing IoT technology in their production operations, as 63% of them believe that IoT will benefit their production. Nearly one-third of the existing production equipment and processes have embedded IoT devices that collect a wide range of data in real time. This data can be analyzed to help businesses predict better production schedules and improve their production cycle.
Big data, predictive analytics to improve production scheduling: Modern solutions can collect huge volumes of data and use predictive analytics or machine-learning algorithms to create production schedules with greater accuracy. These solutions collect data such as machine status, equipment health, raw material cost and availability, and seasonal changes in demand.
