In a shop floor, the time and quantity reporting may happen in different time phases. Lets say , some shop floor has sensory devices where once the final goods are coming out from the conveyer, the number of units being produced are immediately reported to the ERP ( so to the APS- Advance Planning and Scheduling System). In some instances, may be not so immediately but fairly quickly after one batch of items is made. Usually by the machine operator. May be later in n the day by the shop floor supervisor. This could go even weeks and the items may be reported once the order is ready to ship out and reporting may be done as backflush operation.
In any case, The quantities and times are updated to the software system and the current production plan should reflect the effect of these reporting.
Lets take a simple example, A production planner of metal fabrication company create a production schedule for 1 month but constantly updated based on new customer order arrivals ( lets say daily) . Lets say during next day, shop floor operators report production as per the schedule, or may not be as per the schedule, or may be they report some other order that is due in 3 weeks time in the schedule or they physically complete the schedule but do not report. They sometime report operations for shop orders which are already past the current time ( past due) and many other possibilities.
What would planners expect from a advance production planning system to reflect as current schedule?
- Would the schedule be seen as very nervous if reporting is updated to the APS immediately and schedule is automatically updated with the remaining time of all operations and that the reported orders are moved closer to current time and scheduled with remaining time ?
- Would planners prefer to keep some time range fixed ( 1 week in above example) without being affected by new orders but of course be affected by shop floor reporting?
- Lets say an operator reported a shop order that is due in the current schedule in 3 weeks time. Should that order be moved forward automatically as an operator reporting that order means , the order is now being worked on - so that should be reflected on the schedule or should it be scheduled where it is in the time line now and reduced the booked time on the machine to reflect the remaining time requirement ?
- “Updating the schedule with shop floor operation reports “ should not happen immediately/automatically? the planner should intervene and command the system to do it?
- Most of the production planners would like to have the control over the production schedule that they create due to various reasons. The reasons could be managerial, practical, business , act of god, and there are many. If these reasons can be modeled fairly to be as scheduling parameters- would a system which is fully in sync with current shop floor situation based on operation reports be a best schedule or would it be seen as really nervous schedule where things could change in next minute as things are real time.
What are your thoughts if you look at this in production planners eye? what kind of a “updated” schedule you expect from your APS system based on shop floor reporting?
Thank you very much
Saman