Manufacturing Production Schedule
What is a Manufacturing Production Schedule?
A manufacturing production schedule is an output of the manufacturing scheduling process which displays the sequence, timing, and order in which raw materials, inventories, staffing, and machines will be utilized to produce sales orders. An advanced planning and scheduling system (APS), also known as a production planning and scheduling system, creates the manufacturing production schedule. This system gets all of the necessary inputs from connected manufacturing software systems including enterprise resource planning (ERP), manufacturing execution systems (MES), and material requirement planning systems (MRP).
What is the Benefit of An Accurate Production Schedule?
An accurate production schedule improves manufacturing operations by:
- creating feasible production plans
- increasing machine utilization
- improved on-time-delivery
- reducing changeovers and bottlenecks
- decreasing downtime
- minimizing production scheduling labor for staffing
These operational benefits allow the manufacturing business to reduce production costs, increase customer satisfaction, and boost profitability.
What Information is Needed to Create a Manufacturing Production Schedule?
The manufacturing production schedule is produced by manufacturing operations by taking production inputs like:
- sales forecasts
- purchase orders
- due dates
- bill of materials
Accessing the manufacturing resources available to produce these goods, such as:
- raw material inventories
- work-in-process (WIP)
- workforce availability
- machinery
- assembly line configuration
And generating a detailed schedule of exactly how to use these resources to produce the sales orders, in what order to apply them, and exactly when to execute each step.
How To Make A Production Schedule
This will depend largely on the type of business you are, the product or products you offer, and how your manufacturing process works right now. If you’re a relatively small business that deals with only one or two products that are similar to each other in terms of the raw material required to create it, then creating a ‘master’ production schedule is probably all you need. This sort of production schedule will detail all the raw materials, resources, and processes as before, but on a more surface level. Here you’ll record information such as product descriptions, customer and order details, the number of products ordered, and the amount fulfilled by end of the day. You can also allocate the number of machines/production lines (whatever your business has available) that will be dedicated to that product and order on any given day. There will be other information you require too, of course, but the general point to take away here is that it is fairly easy to create a production schedule for smaller businesses with fewer products in theory – although not always in practice. Things become slightly more complicated when you’re a growing business with multiple products to manufacture and those products require different raw materials, etc. Here you’ll not only need to think about a daily or weekly rotating schedule in order to fulfill all of your customer’s needs, but you’ll also need to be thinking about pending orders and how that will fit into your schedule so you can complete all orders in a timely manner. You may also need to break down the schedule into shifts so that you can focus on different orders at different times to improve your manufacturing efficiency. If that sounds quite complicated, it’s because it can become so fairly easily, but there is a solution!
What Is A Production Scheduler?
A production scheduler is someone (or something, but more on that in a moment) that creates the schedule for you. They will look over all the information about your current manufacturing process, the outstanding orders you have, the deadlines for those orders, and the orders you’re currently addressing on the production line, and they’ll make it all run like a well-oiled machine! If that sounds like too much for a single person to undertake, you’re absolutely right. In fact, most enterprise manufacturers who are still using excel spreadsheets or outdated heuristic algorithms are unable to cope with the scheduling requirements even with large, experienced, scheduling teams. They have come to rely upon fast optimization, a patented, next-generation production planning and scheduling system by Optessa. This system is able to model their entire factory ecosystem through configuration, apply true optimization to search through billions of possible solutions, and find the best possible schedule in minutes or even seconds. Using our Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software, we can take all human error and chances for mistakes away. By inputting all of your order information and production processes into our software, we’ll be able to create a perfect solution to your production scheduling needs. Follow the production schedule that the software creates, and you’ll save money, work more efficiently, and please customers like never before! Advanced Planning and Scheduling Software
