Knowledge Base > Basics Of Shop Floor Loading

CAPACITY:

“Cumulative hours of the shifts applied to each work centre, multiplied by the number of machines available”

LOADING:

“Any Outstanding time on an Outstanding Operation on a WO that is incomplete will be considered as work still to be carried out”

How Shop Floor Loading works:

Examples of what SFL can be used for:

1.Assess Outstanding hours by WO or WC by filtering the Work To List Screen, and seeing the number of hours at the foot of the screen.

2.Use the LvC to view graphs of the planned hours on each WC and whether there is Capacity available to fulfill the work (based on the start date of the WOs) and therefore make decisions (e.g. whether work should be moved to different WCs, whether more hours are required etc)

3.In SFL, schedule priority operations then schedule the remaining operations to change the dates of each operation on a WO, which can then be used to produce a Work To List sorted by the dates generated by the schedule. The LvC graphs can then be used to see how evenly the work is spread across the work centres, in case any further decisions need to be made.

Preparation:

Hours: To schedule jobs into SFL, there must be times planned against each operation

Live Operations: It is very useful if times can be recorded live against each operation to ensure the outstanding times on each operation are accurate. If operations are then completed before the planned hours have been used up, it is essential the ops are marked as complete, so no hours will be scheduled.

Live Works Orders: To ensure you are scheduling only live jobs, it is essential the Works Orders are kept up to date, in terms of receipting the correct quantities and thereafter completing it.

Before starting to use SFL and LvC the operations and Works Orders must be tidied and updated.

Work Centre Capacities:

It is essential the Work Centres are setup to replicate how your machines are setup in practice and reflect the number of hours you have available.

WC shift: the shift you apply to a work centre will set the gaps you have available to fit the Works Order operations into. The shift is setup in maintenance>shifts

No. Machines: This will increase the number of hours available for that Work Centre by the number of machines available.

Efficiency: When scheduling, if the efficiency is set to 50% then the operation on that work centre will take twice as long.

Dates:

Dates are very important to allow jobs to be prioritised and it is essential they are setup properly to start with.

Sales Order is entered with a required date

When the Works Order is created from the SO, the SO required date minus margin of error sets the finish date of the master WO

The Start date of the master WO is the SO required date minus the part's leadtime, minus any margin of error.

Any lower level WO takes their finish date from the start date of the master WO, and their start date is the finish date minus the leadtime of the part, and so on down the levels

Options (In SFL then SFL):

In SFL "Options" set the "Scheduling Sort Order", normally as Master WO Finish Date, WO finish Date, Master WO start date then WO start date.

N.B. Remember to "Reset" if the Options, Work Centre details, shifts or holidays have been changed

Whatever order is set in here, is the order the works orders will appear in the grid at the top of SFL screen, and hence the order the system will try to schedule and fit them into the spaces available.

Running SFL:

- If "Load All" is clicked, the system will take each WO in the order they are listed, entering each operation in order against each work centre for the planned setup and run times.

- One operation cannot start until the previous one is complete, hence the WO will be staggered across the gantt chart

- The available spaces are dictated by the start, finish and break times set against the shifts.

- When the system has loaded the first WO it will then go to the next, and for each operation it will look for the first blank space on the work centre that is large enough to accomodate the full planned time.

Unfortunately this may not be the first space available, depending on the way previous ops have been loaded and likewise the operation might fit into a space which comes before operations that were planned to be carried out before the current one, hence the final list of jobs may not look in the correct order. according to the WO dates.

- If more than one machine is available on a work centre, the system will check available time across all machines, but the system cannot share work across multiple machines

Result:

When all jobs have been scheduled:

- drag the cursor over each bar to check the start and finish date/time of each op

- right click to open the WO to check the detail, or highlight the specific WO on the gantt chart to look at all the WO ops together

- to find a specific WO use the filter at the top of the screen and to clear the filter accept a blank filter

- the result of the schedule is that the operation start and finish dates change on the routing section of the WO to reflect the schedule on the gantt chart. These are the dates which dictate the order operations are shown in the Work To List, hence reflecting the most efficient order to carry out the work.

- As well as the Op dates being updated on the routing tab, the WO's SFL scheduled start/finish dates are populated in the WO detail, and are taken from the start date of the first op and the finish date if the last op. This can change each time the WO is scheduled, but the main WO start and finish date can only be changed manually.

Work To List:

- On the main Work To List screen, filter the data as required and for the dates required, then refresh to show the correct information on the screen. Click the arrow at the side of the print button, to select "Work To List"

- The data will reflect what is on the main screen and will be sorted by the Op start date

- Each Work Centre starts a new page

- Work centres with more than one machine will be shown grouped together as one

- To print work to lists for each individual machine within a work centre, goto LvC, tick "View Finite Capacity as Scheduled", then calculate. Each machine will be shown separately, simply click on the one required, then "Print W to L" at the foot of the screen.

- The LvC screen can also be used to print graphs for individual machines, cells or locations and for all machines over a period of time.

Reports:

- Reports>Sales Orders>"Sales Orders Outstanding Showing Scheduled Finish Dates", can be filtered by specific customers or other criteria and shows possible delivery dates of the current live order book.

- Reports>Works Order>"Work Order Schedule Comparison Report", to assess the possible finish date of works orders compared to what was planned