In manufacturing, delivering high-quality service takes accurate planning. Manufacturing scheduling software helps businesses make the best use of their resources. The manufacturing scheduling software improves production flow and customer satisfaction. The right job shop scheduling system streamlines your job shop production and maximizes efficiency and benefits.
A comprehensive scheduling software gives a big picture of production. It also makes production planning faster and more efficient.
Finding the right manufacturing scheduling software depends on the type of manufacturing industry or job shop. There are many features to consider when it comes to choosing the solution that fits your business model.
This article looks at important factors in choosing the right manufacturing scheduling software solution. Every manufacturing or factory is different. Here the focus is on repair and overhaul manufacturing and job shops.
Table of Contents:
- What are the important features of manufacturing scheduling software?
- What are the challenges facing repair and overhaul manufacturing and job shop businesses?
- Advanced Job Scheduling for job shops and overhaul industries
- How can Manufacturing Scheduling Software benefit your production?
What are the important features of manufacturing scheduling software?
Scheduling for employee availability, skill sets, equipment, and operation requirements can be time-consuming.
A successful manufacturing operation requires optimization in:
- assigning labor
- assigning tools and machinery
- and allocating tasks
In a software environment, these translate to:
1- Assigning Resources in Manufacturing Planning and Scheduling Software:
Managing resources in a manufacturing environment need special considerations. Assigning machinery, work centers, and human resources can be time-consuming. But job scheduling software can make this process faster and more efficient.
Managing resources is the most basic feature in manufacturing scheduling software. Depending on the type and size of the operation these steps might be broken down further.
Production Planning Steps:
The two-step production planning covers planning, design, and the actual scheduling stages in two steps:
Step A: Production Design and Planning:
Production Design and planning is about breaking down customer orders into tasks. And later, assigning them to the employees and machinery. There are a few steps that are usually covered here:
- Preparing the Bill of Material (BOM): the material needed to run the tasks
- Production Routing: This is a sequential path. It breaks down manufacturing steps along with their duration and any other requirements
- Allocating proper resources for production: assigning work centers and resources for the job
Step B: Production Scheduling:
- Assigning individual tasks/activities on a timeline according to the production plan.
2- Real-time change Management in Production Planning
In repair and overhaul manufacturing or job shops, task duration is not always the same. A manufacturing scheduling software that best fits such an operation should handle unexpected changes. A change in task duration can impact the next job scheduled in the day and as a result changes in priorities.
A job shop scheduler should be able to handle changes and re-schedule the resources based on the new priorities.
When changing your job scheduling, you want to:
- You want to see the new revenue projection before deploying the new changes.
- Be able to send the new task schedule to your shop floor employees on the same day.
3- Visual Manufacturing Scheduling Software
A visual scheduling manufacturing software gives you a snapshot of your production timeline. All the schedules, tasks, and resources are visible in a visual format. This allows for making executing decisions when needed.
4- Full Integration
A scheduling system should fully integrate with your existing software systems. This avoids redundant data entry and the trouble of moving data from one system to another.
5- Real-time monitoring
A manufacturing scheduling software should give you a snapshot of your system. You want to see at any time what is happening on the shop floor, and what resources are idle or backlogged.
You want to be able to see:
- real-time labor distributions
- real-time machinery usage
- Real-time task progress
6- Customization in manufacturing scheduling software
Each manufacturing operation is different. A scheduling solution should fit your business model. This requires the possibility of some customization.
What are the challenges facing repair and overhaul manufacturing and job shop businesses?
The best way to meet deadlines and optimize the operating cost is to keep track of the production flow.
Job shops businesses have one or more of the following characteristics:
- The unpredictable influx of incoming Work: This is when the flow of incoming work changes in volume.
- Changing Priorities: Complexities in operation often require changing task priorities
- Task duration: Tasks have different duration. And at times unpredictable too.
- Complex Interdependence of tasks: completing a task depends on other tasks
Advanced Job Scheduling for job shops and overhaul industries
Many job shops need job scheduling software that allows for changes and flexibility. This flexibility could be in production planning or assigning labor and other resources. When implemented into the shop scheduling software it allows for:
- Fast and optimization scheduling
- Manual intervention
- Executive decision-making
- Business vision implementation
This job scheduling requires flexibility in its scheduling process.Here are the main features of a job shop scheduling for repair and overhaul:
- Visual scheduling: Gives you a big picture of the tasks in operation. This helps the production manager make changes with more confidence.
- Automated scheduling: It allows for fast rescheduling of the entire operation and produces an estimated revenue gain based on the new changes. Production managers can make sure that the new changes meet the target revenue.
- Flexible Scheduling: This allows for fast handling of changes. It gives the ability to change the priorities and schedules as needed.
How can manufacturing scheduling software benefit your job shop?
Managing the scheduling increases the efficiency of your shop environment. It reduces the planning time and gives more accurate estimates of the jobs on your shop floor.
Here are a few breakdowns, depending on the business type some or all these might apply to your process:
1- Optimized labor and machinery scheduling
Manufacturing scheduling software gives you the option to automate the process. Reach the best outcome in labor and machinery scheduling in a few minutes.
It should allow production managers to schedule some tasks manually.
2- Real-time production scheduling
Real-time production screening gives you an overview of what is happening. It can give live reporting of the status of resources on your shop floor.
Similarly, it identifies resource strains. This means you can take effective steps to improve the production process.
3- Reducing wait times and bottlenecks
Job shop scheduling software balances workload across all resources. Further, it cuts wait time and identifies bottlenecks. It minimizes machinery downtime and makes the best use of existing resources. This increases your efficiency through production.
4- Flexibility for Change
Manufacturing scheduling software allows you to change your priorities efficiently. When needed it can help you to reschedule your tasks efficiently.
4- Improved Customer Satisfaction
Making the best use of resources and the flexibility to reschedule as required helps you meet customers’ needs. Completing customer orders on time and timely delivery leads to high customer satisfaction and secures return business.