A Powerful Solution for Planning and Analysis of Job Shops

Every production unit tries to extract the maximum possible throughput from limited production resources and determine how to add minimal resource capacities and give minimal overtime to resources for meeting certain production targets. This is particularly true for companies which produce a variety of products using limited multi-functional resources and multi-skilled workers. Planning of high-mix, low-volume production becomes quite complex when multi-skilled workers can be shifted to different work centers as product mix keeps changing continuously. Multi-functional machines also add similar difficulty. There may be differences among worker efficiencies and among machine process rates. Job characteristics may sometimes determine the selection of a specific machine or a specific worker for an operation. Production management and capacity planning are not easy in this kind of environment.

How much a high-mix, low-volume production unit can produce in a specific time period? This is a vague question when jobs have different routings, process times and resource requirements and resources are multi-functional. However, with the help of scientific calculations, it is possible to answer many questions including the following:

Can the unit accept a new job with a certain due date?
What is the earliest due date that is possible for a new job under normal priority without affecting the planned and ongoing jobs?
How to expedite a particular job (by giving minimal overtime to resources) without a significant adverse impact on other jobs?
Can the unit produce a given set of distinct jobs within specified time period? If not, how to optimally increase the resource availability to meet the production requirement?
Which skill needs more workers to improve the overall shop productivity?
How to optimally assign shifts to workers for a given production plan over a time period?
How to give cost-effective overtime to resources to meet production targets whenever necessary?
Which operations can be outsourced in a rational and cost-effective manner to meet production targets?

We offer a powerful solution, JobshopSim to answer such questions in complex job shops. It is based on a versatile production model and rigorous, scientific logic. The model covers project-based production as well. The primary advantage of the solution is an increase in throughput, on-time delivery and resource utilization. Routing information is an essential input for this solution.