Scheduling

The number one reason for implementing a new ERP system or work order management software is to get control of your work schedule. On-time deliveries can be even more important than price in driving the success of your business.

JobOps job shop tracking software takes a realistic approach to delivering the tools that you need and can use, letting you get control over the scheduling issues that impact getting jobs done on time.

Capable to Promise

Since being able to deliver on time really begins with the original promised ship date, JobOps begins the scheduling process as early as the time of the quote or acceptance of the order. The JobOps Scheduling Module provides for a “Capable to Promise” calculation when quoting or booking orders. This calculation analyzes the time required for the job against the currently scheduled jobs. It also analyzes the availability of materials required for the new job. The Capable to Promise calculator then returns the earliest possible completion date, so that you can discuss it with your customer before committing to the ship date they are requesting.

Manufacturing Capacity Planning Tools

Do you have finite resources available to complete your jobs? In an ideal world, a scheduling system would make sure that your resources are never overloaded.

If you allow sales and customers to determine requested ship dates, in effect, you are running your operations as if your resources have infinite capacity. In the real world, when you overload your resources, you still need to deliver on time. Therefore your options are to run overtime, or reassign the work to another resource.

JobOps Scheduling Engine combines the ideal world with the real world. For those resources that always seem to be the bottlenecks in your schedule, JobOps will plan around these finite resources. For the resources where overtime or reallocation is an option, it will plan infinitely.

The scheduling engine will load your new jobs into the schedule, according to your finite and infinite rules, into the schedule by reverse scheduling from the promised ship date. If the scheduling engine determines that the start date for the job is earlier than the current date, it will stop the reverse scheduling process and forward schedule the job. JobOps will not create an unrealistic schedule for a job, but it will alert you to jobs that are now marked as “late” and will require additional attention. (see “Drag and Drop” below for tools to fix late jobs)

The graphical schedule board will then immediately alert you to overloaded resources that could jeopardize the schedule and also provides tools allowing you to correct the problems. These tools are used in a “what if?” mode so that before committing to the new schedule, you can verify that fixing one problem did not create a new problem elsewhere.

Integrated MRP/ERP System

Planning your workload is only effective if you have the materials available that are required by the jobs you are scheduling.

JobOps Scheduling takes your material availability into account by being able to create the optimal schedule. Using JobOps automated purchasing (see the “Purchasing” page) can only assure that materials are ordered on time – it cannot guarantee that your vendors will deliver as promised.

Releasing a schedule to your work force for jobs that have material shortages will only waste their time as they search for the missing materials – thereby increasing the cost of the job, since they have now lost valuable time.

JobOps alerts you to material shortages in the graphical scheduling board. It also allows you to drill down into the status of these materials, letting you make decisions about either postponing the work or “borrowing” the material from another job that the material has been issued to.

Drag and Drop Scheduling

Once alerted to the possible exceptions of capacity overloads, material shortages or late jobs, JobOps scheduling provides tools to help you deal with the issues. Do you have another resource cross-trained to do the work that is currently scheduled to an overloaded resource? JobOps graphical scheduling board displays the workload from jobs as a Gantt chart, or bar graph, against the resources. Simply drag the task to the cross trained resource and the work has been reassigned to get done on time, and without using costly overtime.

If you don’t have another resources available, the schedule board allows you to change the work calendar on the fly, meaning that you can increase the hours worked that day to accommodate the requirements from your jobs – it may mean running overtime, but at least the jobs will get done on time!

JobOps is the most sophisticated, powerful manufacturing enterprise resource planning software available for small to mid-sized manufacturers.