Scheduling #
Manu Online includes a real time scheduling system based on sales order entry and work order creation. The scheduling system is used to plan manufacturing and procurement activities.
Basic principles #
The basic principles of the scheduling system are as follows:
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Quantities of each material item are allocated to each individual, undelivered sales order line.
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The allocation takes place when the sales order is activated. For this reason, sales order activation can be fast by a few seconds or slow by a few minutes (depending on the availability and complexity of the products on the sales order).
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If products are made to stock, then items may be allocated to a work order without being also allocated to a sales order line.
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The allocation happens according to a first-come, first-serve principle.
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The allocation process will cascade through unlimited levels of product structure, as specified in the items’ “Manufacture template” on the Item card, until only purchase materials are encountered.
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The allocation process will first check for unallocated products/subassemblies in inventory and then for products/subassemblies in open work orders.
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The allocation process will also allocate materials from undelivered purchase orders.
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If insufficient material items are available, planned orders will be created. Planned orders can be for work orders or purchase orders.
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Non-material items (such as work or machine) will be planned but not allocated.
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It is possible to manually change the priority of sales orders, for instance to a due date order instead of first-come, first-served order, and have them rescheduled on that basis.
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It is recommended, but not required, to receive and ship materials correctly according to their allocations.
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During the use of the system certain allocation problems may occur, for instance, inventory quantities change or products are shipped to an order to which they are not allocated. These problems will be fixed by the system in the following night, or they can be fixed immediately by running a manual rescheduling operation.
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It is possible to configure the system to rerun allocations during the night. The parameters for this are set by the service provider. Contact the help desk for further information.
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Sales forecasts are not included in material allocations. However they are included in purchase planning when using the optional purchase planner.
Manual Rescheduling #
Manual rescheduling can be instigated from two places: the Sales section and the Production section
To manually reschedule from the sales section, select ‘Other operations’ then click the ‘Adjust sales order priority’ link. Click the Add lines button to add the activated sales order lines that are to be rescheduled – it is possible to add two or more lines, or all open lines. Having added the lines, adjust the priority of the lines either manually or by selecting one of the options from the list box and pressing [Sort]. When the lines are in the correct order, press [Run]. The sales orders will be unallocated, then reallocated in the order specified.
When manually rescheduling from the Production section, select ‘Scheduling’ from the side menu, then click the ‘Reschedule work orders’ link.
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In a similar way to rescheduling sales orders, it is possible to add planned and open work orders to the rescheduling list, adjust their priorities either manually or according to the specified criteria and run the rescheduling.
By pressing [Full MRP (long)] it is possible to reschedule all activities. The (long) word gives a warning that this process may take a long time depending on the size and complexity of the manufacturing operations. During a long operation the connection between your browser and the server may experience a time out. Regardless of this loss of connection the process will continue on the server and you should log in again later. Also some data entry activities may be prevented during the run.
Pressing [Control panel] will open the scheduling control panel where it is possible to set various criteria for the operation of the scheduling and allocation process. By selecting the ‘Replan during the night’ option in the control panel the Full MRP run can be set to occur every night automatically.
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Minutes per period |
The number of minutes in one period that is used in scheduling |
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Periods per day |
How many periods in the day. These two parameters set the length of the working day. |
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Business day (day of week) |
Which days of the week the factory is working |
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Allocate late work (days) |
The number of days later than theoretically required that requirements can be allocated to an existing work order with free products. |
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No extra planned work |
Never plan more work orders if there are free products on open work orders with completion date at any time. |
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Allocate late purchases (days) |
The number of days later than theoretically required that purchase requirements can be allocated to an existing purchase order with free materials. |
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No extra planned purchases |
Never plan more purchases if there are free materials on an open purchase with delivery date at any time. |
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Resync work plans (days) |
The number of days over which the requirements for a work order will be immediately resynchronised. It the work order requirements have a difference in synchronisation of less than this, then the resynchronisation will occur on the following night run. Resynchronisation is required when a number of planned work orders with slightly different dates are included into a new work order. When the new work order is opened then the system needs to recalculate the material requirements for the work order based on the work order’s dates rather than the planned work orders’ various dates which were originally calculated from the requirement dates of the sales orders. |
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Replan during the night |
Run the night time rescheduling operation. This will run the ‘Full MRP’ scheduling operation automatically every night. |
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Scheduling parameters set by Manu Online support #
There are several parameters that affect the scheduling during the night run that cannot be set by the user. They can be changed by our support team. This is to reduce the risk of loss of scheduling data if these parameters are mistakenly set. If you think you want to change any of these parameters please contact us so that we can advise.
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Release sales order allocations |
During the night run the scheduling system will release all stock and work order allocations and reallocate all materials in required date order (as opposed to first come, first served order). |
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Release allocations for purchases only |
Similar to the above, but sales order line allocations to work orders and to inventory will not be released. However purchasing will be re-planned based on required dates. |
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Scheduling cut off months |
The number of months into the future greater than which a sales order line will not be scheduled. The sales order will be scheduled for the first time by the night run when the required date becomes less than this number of months into the future. |
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Scheduling for “Dedicated” work orders #
There is an option on the sales order line ‘Dedicated work order’. If this option is selected then the scheduling system will not allocate the line requirements to any open work order nor will it allocate the line from any free stock. The work order can then be opened manually in the normal way from the Production section. Alternatively if the ‘Open work order automatically’ property in the operation template is selected then the dedicated work order will be opened automatically when the sales order is activated. It is recommended to open work orders automatically when using dedicated work orders.
Scheduling and inventory locations #
It is possible to exclude certain inventory locations from the scheduling process. This is done so that, for instance, a sample stock is not allocated to sales orders.
To exclude a location from the scheduling, go to the Partners section and open the company address which is for this location. Select the ’Grouping’ tab and ensure that the check box ‘Stock availability’ is not selected.
When specifying a “Ship from” location in a sales order which is different from the default home company, then the system will first schedule for products from that location. Then it will schedule from the default company’s location. It will not allocate products from other locations. This feature ensures that if product is kept at multiple sales offices then products from other sales offices will not be allocated.
Buffer work orders #
Buffer work orders are production work orders that are created for the purpose of producing purchase planning in excess of that needed to meet normal manufacturing requirements. To ensure that there is always sufficient materials to manufacture a certain product, open a buffer work order for the product.
A buffer work order is a work order with a priority of less than 10.
The system will create planned purchase orders as required to fulfil the needs of the buffer in addition to any other requirements. When new requirements appear in the system for example from a new sales order, the scheduling system will reallocate any materials allocated to the buffer to the new order. So the buffer will always be last in the list for any requirements.
It is not necessary to change or complete the buffer order at any time. The exception is if the product structure of the main product is changed, then this change should also be implemented in the template of the buffer.
