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If your production schedule is not meeting expectations, this article from Christian Ruf on types of scheduling systems and tools may help.

Does your production scheduling fall short of your expectations? You might be using the wrong scheduling system!

Production scheduling is the final planning stage before the actual production, and the resulting production schedule suggests to operators and supervisors on the shop floor which tasks should be executed on which machines and in which order. Traditionally, a hierarchical planning approach is taken where production scheduling follows production planning, which typically consists of two or more planning stages. Either way, the production plan (i.e., the output of production planning) establishes production quantities over a medium-term horizon (up to 24 months into the future) on a weekly or daily granularity, it may include batch sizes and routes, and it should be consistent with the material plan. The production is an input to production scheduling. However, it may be necessary to revise the production plan incorporating feedback from the scheduling stage when it becomes apparent that the plan is not realistic.

Scheduling systems come in different forms, namely Excel, off-the-shelf advanced planning systems (APS), and custom solutions, and they use different scheduling methods to construct schedules. For example, spreadsheet-based systems usually employ simple loading procedures. This post gives an overview on the available types of scheduling systems, the types of production processes and how scheduling differs among them.

Key points include:

• Production systems
• Scheduling methods
• Scheduling systems

Read the full article, Systems and Methods for Production, on CDRuff.com.