|
For
complex job shops with high-mix, low-volume production,
meaningful production scheduling in advance is possible only
with a clear, comprehensive understanding of the dynamic
nature of the production system. The scheduling system is at
the core of production control and management of a job shop. A
decent scheduling system helps organize a multitude of
production operations on limited resources in a feasible and
rational manner by taking into account due dates and priorities of jobs, the design, engineering and process requirements of diverse jobs, availability of resources, and the availability and procurement of materials.
The nature of job shop production
For any job shop that mostly makes products only after
receiving customer orders, the throughput and on-time
delivery performance are as important as the quality and cost
of its products. Using many shared resources of finite
capacity, job shops simultaneously process numerous jobs that
have different routings, quantities, process times, due
dates, priorities, and material and resource requirements.
The product mix keeps changing rapidly with incoming orders
and their due dates. In project-based custom manufacturing,
many types of parts with different routings, process times
and resource requirements have to be processed in a
synchronous manner such that assemblies are done without
component delays and component inventory is minimum at
assembly stage.
The complexity of job shop production
management
In job shops, production complexity has little correlation
with size and revenue of the company. The heterogeneous
workload, dependency relations among operations and finite
capacity of resources make it difficult to predict workflow,
moving bottlenecks and job completion times in job shops. The
absence of such prediction prevents proactive production
planning, contributes to firefighting significantly and makes
production control less efficient. Production is most often
managed by frequent or continuous firefighting on the shop
floor with knowing its domino effect on production. The
firefighting feeds itself and is aggravated by unexpected
events, rework / rejections, acceptance of hot jobs, changes
in priorities and reminders from customers.
A solution from Optisol
A visibility of the existing workload, reliable prediction of
workflow and moving bottlenecks, rational due date
determination and right timing of job loading are essential
for efficient management of comple job shop production. To
achieve this functionality, Optisol offers a state-of-the-art
software tool, Schedlyzer that schedules the heterogeneous
workload in a job shop in a feasible and rational manner. Schedlyzer supports efficient
production management in complex job shops by scheduling
workload in an optimal manner.
The power of Optisol solution
Schedlyzer is a state-of-the-art scheduling tool based on a
powerful and versatile scheduling paradigm and advanced
scheduling algorithms. Schedlyzer is based on
many years of research on rigorous, scientific, finite
capacity scheduling. Optisol
publicly claims that it is the most powerful tool for job shop
production scheduling at operational level. It
exploits the tremendous power and memory of the currently
available low-cost computers. Schedlyzer is a Windows-based
software tool which is extremely fast and very user-friendly.
Its real strenght lies in fast and extensive what-if analysis
with little manual effort. Optisol publicly claims that it is
the most powerful scheduling tool for job shops.
The primary benefits of Optisol
solution
- Improvements in throughput, on-time delivery, customer
confidence, resource utilization, prediction of workflow,
bottlenecks and job completion times.
- Reduction in lead times, WIP, and firefighting
- Instantaneous rescheduling of production in a feasible
and rational manner
- Fast and extensive what-if analysis of production
schedules.
The tool is very beneficial to custom manufacturing units
(including make-to-order and engineer-to-order production
units) that can update job status information at least once a
day.
Affordability of Optisol solution
As some of our clients feel, Schedlyzer makes scientific,
finite capacity scheduling affordable even for small job shops
with complex production. By offering Schedlyzer even to small
job shops at affordable prices, Optisol removes the myth that
finite capacity scheduling tools are expensive. Since
implementation of our scientific scheduling tool requires some
modeling effort, Optisol offers a trial version of the tool
only after presenting a live web demo of the tool and having a
brief description of target production systems. The tool can
be tested during the demo by making any changes in the input
data even for tens of thousands of operations.
A caution
Do not purchage any scheduling tool for your job shop unless you use it on your
shop floor on a trial basis at least for a month or two.
Otherwise, you might create one more failure case of
computer-based scheduling.
|
|
Scheduling
Issues