Page 5 - Demo

Slippery rock Gazette December 2021|5
Training & Education
Scheduling orders in a custom man- ufacturing envi-
ronment is much more art than science. The scheduler must consider a myriad of factors every day for the manufacturing system. If installation of the finished product is also required–Like in a coun- tertop shop –the schedul- ing system becomes even more complicated.
Essentially, the job of the Scheduler is to load sold orders into the man- ufacturing system to its capacity while meeting customer demands. The result should be a plan that meets customer due dates within the internal capac- ity of the business.
To do this, you must first know the system capacity. In fact, your sys- tem has finite, not infinite, capacity. With the fickle and unpredictable mar- ket demand day to day, your process must reduce that market variability to a manageable daily sched- ule. Some companies sim- ply take the daily demand and cram it into the man- ufacturing system with- out careful consideration of actual capacity. This approach is doomed to failure. You must know your system’s capac- ity and schedule to it. Submitting a schedule that exceeds your man- ufacturing capacity will never work, and will cer- tainly create lots of chaos. Ultimately, this “wishful thinking” approach will not satisfy the customer and will create ill will in the market.
It takes negotiation with the customer base. It is hard work for the sched- uler and requires a skill- set that not everyone has. A talented scheduler is a great asset to a custom manufacturing business.
Ed Hill
Synchronous Solutions
Throughput ($T), which is defined as the measure of value added, represents the transformation of raw material investments into the income for finished products. $T is the value of that transformation and is an accurate reflection of the labor content for a job, including factors such as mitered edges and sink cutouts, which would not be recognized by a dimen- sional metric like square feet. More importantly, $T is directly relative to the financial performance of the company. At a planned $T earning for the month, you can know how much profit you will make. Not so with square feet.
True Level Load sched- uling can only be accom- plished with a metric like $T. Note that this could mean a different amount of square feet per day, but a consistent amount of $T, which will occupy about the same labor content.
How Many Schedules are Needed?
Your business capacity is determined by your sys- tem’s constraint. Just as a chain is only as strong as the one weakest link, your business capacity is deter- mined by the one process step that has demonstrated the least daily capacity. That is the only place that determines the capacity of your entire business sys- tem. Every other resource should strive to feed the system’s constraint.
Please turn to page 10
The Art of Scheduling
Scheduling is the process of
arranging, controlling and optimizing customer orders in a production process.
The “Level Load” Schedule
An ideal schedule cre- ates a daily level load. That means that the scheduler works to minimize the vari- ability day to day. Every manufacturing manager will understand this issue. When the schedule creates a roller coaster ride with way too much work one day and not enough another day, the shop is virtually impossible to manage. A level load will actually increase system capacity. In other words, with careful consideration for minimizing schedule variability day to day, your business will actually pro- duce more. Guaranteed.
Level loading requires use of a metric that relates to actual labor demand. Any dimensional metric, like square feet, linear feet or linear inches, will not do this. The metric we recom- mend is Throughput. (See Square Feet vs. Dollars in the July 2018 issue of The Slippery Rock Gazette for more information on this subject.)
The scheduling function is the bridge between Sales and Manufacturing. It is an operational function and should report to the Operations Manager.
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