For a variety of reasons, some manufacturers prefer to schedule jobs according to the limitation of resources and capacity found within their system. Scheduling processes that, from the outset, take the limited capacity of a plant to produce are said to be using a finite approach to scheduling management. For the manufacturer, this approach works a schedule according to capacity criteria set in advance of production. The criteria can include any number of factors such as job due dates, job importance, and even the very importance of the customer to the manufacturer.

Finite scheduling means that you are more often than not running your most important jobs first, getting them out as close to the promised delivery due date as possible, while hoping to return to less vital jobs in due time. (more…)

Whether in a major manufacturing organization or on a country newspaper route, the degree to which you are able to delivery the goods on-time is often the determining factor for the loyalty of any customer. While some tolerances can be made for the occasional late throw of the daily rag, in many businesses today on-time delivery is vital to performance, for manufacturing exists in a world built around the domino effect.

Your late delivery of product impacts the due dates promised by the myriad other shops in the manufacturing supply chain—as you fail, so too do those downstream from you. Suddenly, everyone is having to explain to their own customers the reasons for delays in the production and delivery of promised goods, and no increase in quality or reduction in price will help you back into the good graces of your clients. (more…)

It is certain that when efficiencies in manufacturing shop floor operations improve, productivity rises. On the other hand, it is also certain that when efficiencies decline, so does productivity. For the job shop, make-to-stock, or make-to-order manufacturer, the problem has always been how to maintain communication between all areas of the plant with real-time information.

Whether it is materials management, dispatch lists and routers, inventory management, shop floor scheduling, shipping, or the many other areas of manufacturing, the quest has always been for efficient connections between departments.

Today, the Graphical User Interface (or GUI) is a central data collection tool employed to bring together all of the various and distant areas of the manufacturing process with the same, real-time information for everyone to see. Through an easy to use and read terminal, the GUI presents the users with data collected from every aspect of the plant or shop. This information is used to make production decisions that, in the long run, will produce efficiencies and profits for the company.

Though the list of benefits for using a centralized data collection system is long, here are eight of the greatest advantages of the GUI manufacturing software:

1) Easy Log-In and Log-Off: The GUI system allows shop floor personnel to log-in and log-off jobs from a central location. This clocking information is then stored for easy access by payroll and scheduling.

2) Next Job Priority Settings: The GUI lets the shop floor personnel review the Work Order Detail to see what jobs have been completed, are presently in process, or need to be worked on. Shop floor personnel then clock onto the jobs that have highest priority.

3) Instant Prints and Documents: A robust GUI system will give the shop floor person on-screen links that will pull up visible documents and images associated with the part(s) or assemblies being worked on.

4) Accessible Quality Instructions: Production quality tolerances are included in the job details accompanying the work order and/or dispatch list.

5) Tooling Instructions: Efficient, time saving designs tell the employee the tooling requirements to set-up machines for any particular job.

6) Tooling Locations: Tooling and material parts are located before the job is to begin, thereby eliminating the indirect cost of personnel taking valuable time to search for tools.

7) Parts Worked On: In addition to adding multiple jobs, shop floor employees can enter specific part(s) being worked on at any moment, as well as the number of parts completed per job, as well as the amount of scrapped produced.

Requisitions: From the centrally located terminal, employees can requisition parts and material for production from in-stock inventory. In an efficient GUI system, shop floor personnel can even generate a purchase order for outside vendors.

As a monitor of job performance, the GUI also acts as an analyzer of actual production data (e.g., parts/scrap produced) as it is related to the performance data of the various shop floor work centers (e.g., employee time clock). To this end, time management becomes an even more important concept in manufacturing, and one that best addresses efficiency in production.

In conclusion, the GUI is a single-point and multi-purpose shop floor and work order management tool that returns time to the manufacturer as a valuable production resource. It is a manufacturing software solution that should be seriously considered by all operations looking to gain bottom-line profit margins.

Manufacturers are increasingly feeling the pressure of doing more with less and in a shorter period of time. Lead times decrease as work loads increase. Furthermore, matured global competition means that the bottom-line is being bombarded by tighter and tighter margins. To combat these forces against profit, manufacturers have turned to gaining greater productivity through the reductions of waste in the system; that is, to find efficiencies in the manufacturing process where profits are squeezed out of production itself.

To this end, total enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the name of the modern manufacturing game. Within the context of ERP, “single input” concepts mean that an organization hopefully moves and thinks as one. (more…)

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a mode of manufacturing built upon the notion of a single software program serving the needs of all aspects of the operation. In strict terms, the true ambition of ERP is to integrate all departments and functions across a manufacturer through the single-source software program, while eliminating departmental standalone computer systems.

It is hoped that such integration will facilitate the sharing of the same real-time data simultaneously to all areas of the plant, thus coordinating decision-making processes and outcomes. To this end, an ERP approach can have significant on-time delivery improvements and positive ROI–if, the software is installed properly, integrated system-wide, and correctly utilized in operation. (more…)

For manufacturing planning and scheduling systems that consider capacity leveling, production data is plugged into equations that result in two types of schedules: Those based upon the known real-time data of existing work loads, emerging jobs, material, machines, and labor (finite scheduling); and, those schedules for orders and operations that ignore all existing and/or future resource loads (infinite scheduling).

In either case, for the most dynamic creation of finite or infinite scheduling a powerful enterprise resource planning software program (ERP) is needed to factor a wide range of production data and variables. (more…)

In today’s manufacturing environment, enterprises must operate their businesses with an eye toward becoming evermore “lean and mean”, as well as taking full control of every aspect of the system. This means bringing greater efficiencies into their job shop or make-to-order manufacturing operation. However, such gains in efficiency are not easy to achieve in long-entrenched production operations, and are often the result of either a complete overhaul of a total manufacturing environment or a more nuanced approach to improvement in specific parts of the process.

In either scenario, the manufacturing system is analyzed for nonproductive operations, places where wasteful functions in the manufacturing process can be leaned of their inefficiencies. These nonproductive aspects are the focus of change in the system, and the central point where enterprise resource planning (ERP) meets lean objectives. (more…)