The Importance and Benefits of Job Shop Scheduling

Having a plan or schedule is essential for a manufacturing operation that is seeking to have visibility into their manufacturing operation. This applies directly to job shop production, in which the goal is to match overall supply and demand. Supply includes factors such as capacity, resource, labor, and material availability in the job shop, while demand pertains to the actual job orders within the manufacturing facility according to the resources and capacities needed to adequately complete the job. Within job shop scheduling, the goal is to combine these components of internal supply and demand in the most efficient and optimal way possible. This is why having a proper schedule is an absolute must for job shop managers.

Many job shop manufacturers rely on outdated scheduling methods that are inefficient, which puts them behind the competition. While they strive to achieve transparency, they utilize outdated concepts such as paper, whiteboard, or attempt to create an excel solution. These tools lack real-time visibility and fail to communicate the current production capabilities and proactively utilize these insights into planning down the road. It is obvious that these outdated methods are not compatible or reliable enough for the chaotic job shop environment and therefore have a substantial negative impact on the production process. Overall, utilizing proper job shop scheduling will allow you to properly handle the volatile job shop environment and ultimately boost production efficiency within your manufacturing operation. Without further adieu, here are the benefits of utilization of proper job scheduling benefits.

Proper Job Shop Scheduling Benefits  

The benefits of job shop scheduling benefits include the following:

• Visibility and Transparency - A job shop manufacturer can not refuse to introduce an adequate job shop scheduling software. Gaining transparency over the production process is the overall goal of any scheduling tool. Having said that, an advantageous job shop schedule is that it offers not only current order visibility, but also over labor and machine capacity, waiting times, due dates, and production dependencies. The schedule needs to provide all precise information needed to fully understand the components that influence the current and future manufacturing process. It also may be beneficial to have a system that more people have access to. This allows the general plan to be visible to more than one person in the work plant.
  
  
• Control and Precision over Planning - Once you gain visibility over the production process and understand ongoing processes, you are then able to take over full control. With proper production scheduling, manufacturers can anticipate and direct new orders as well as change current orders. You are able to move from being reactive to being proactive in shaping production.
  
  
• Identification of New Opportunities - Identifying new opportunities can be lead to substantial improvements within production. Similar to the way you identify bottlenecks through an increased level of visibility, new opportunities can pop up as well. It may become apparent that a certain capacity is always idle and can be utilized elsewhere, or a production line may be altered which would reduce its throughput time. Overall, identifying new opportunities is extremely important for supply chain growth.
  
  
• Real-Time Feedback - An advantageous job shop schedule will provide a manufacturer with notifications, such as error or other alerts pertaining to your production. These alerts allow you to make decisions based off of real-time issues or hindrances within the production line such as when on-time delivery is in danger or when production is off schedule. This will aid in avoiding potential errors and increasing your productivity.
  
  
• What-if Scenarios - What-if scenarios can provide thorough visibility into what production schedules are the most beneficial to your manufacturing process. This feature allows you to simply add or change jobs and view the impact of small changes of other processes, resources, material, personnel, and other capacities. This helps manufacturers locate quick solutions to various problems.

All of these benefits of job shop scheduling can aid your production with ease. PlanetTogether’s Advanced Planning and Scheduling software (APS) can aid a job shop environment and offer thorough insight into your production process. APS software is being integrated by many manufacturers around the globe and has allowed them to take their production process to the next level.

Advanced Planning and Scheduling Software

Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software has become a must for modern-day manufacturing operations due to customer demand for increased product mix and fast delivery combined with downward cost pressures. APS can be quickly integrated with a ERP/MRP software to fill gaps where these system lack planning and scheduling flexibility and accuracy. Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) helps planners save time while providing greater agility in updating ever-changing priorities, production schedules, and inventory plans.

• Create optimized schedules balancing production efficiency and delivery performance
• Maximize output on bottleneck resources to increase revenue
• Synchronize supply with demand to reduce inventories
• Provide company-wide visibility to capacity
• Enable scenario data-driven decision making

Implementation of Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software will take your manufacturing operations to the next level of production efficiency, taking advantage of the operational data you already have in your ERP.