Job Scheduling Challenges for a Custom Job Shop - Email found in

Yahoo Archive
1
We have about 25 office positions and about 60 shop positions, currently running
one shift. There are about 6 departments in the shop. We make medical
furnishing, so a low lead time and quality is important. That is why we have a
full time scheduler and a quality control person.




________________________________
From: Ken Williams <kwilliams@...>
To: "vantage@yahoogroups.com" <vantage@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wed, August 11, 2010 9:48:58 AM
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Job Scheduling Challenges for a Custom Job Shop - Email
found in subject

Â
Steven, mind if I ask how big your production is? How many employees/man hours
or work cells? We have approximately 30 employees ~ 1400 weekly man hours across
8 work cells.


We’ve briefly discussed a full time scheduler, but resistance has been paying
someone to do only that job given our size.


Ken


From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Steven Gotschall

Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 4:51 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Vantage] Job Scheduling Challenges for a Custom Job Shop - Email
found in subject




We also never tell a customer no, and we do a good amount of customization. We
have a full time scheduler who's job is to take what Vantage has and determines
what jobs need to go out to the floor every day. Our production supervisors
also meet every morning to look at the schedule and prioritise. Bottom line,
human intervention and lots of communication.

________________________________
From: Ken Williams
<kwilliams@...<mailto:kwilliams%40intermountainelectronics.com>>

To: "vantage@yahoogroups.com<mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>"
<vantage@yahoogroups.com<mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>>

Sent: Tue, August 10, 2010 6:53:01 PM
Subject: [Vantage] Job Scheduling Challenges for a Custom Job Shop


We've been live no Vantage for nearly 4 years now. We've come to terms with all
"limitations" and made a lot of BPM changes to get Vantage to work best with our

business. Our biggest hurdle has and continues to be Job Scheduling. The issues
we have all stem from being a custom job shop who never tells the customer "no".


The discussions we've internally had lead us in circles, ultimately circling
back to "how can we expect a computer system to perform with these parameters".
So, I'm reaching out to the community to see if anyone else in a custom job shop

has the same issues we have and what you've done to help improve scheduling.

Biggest hurdles:

1. Our jobs range from 1 hour jobs to 1000 hour jobs.

2. Our jobs range from 1 operation to 6 operations.

3. Our job flow is to push a job through from start to finish, not "when an
operation can fit in" like Vantage finite scheduling

4. Our jobs are 90% unique.

5. Our job estimates can be +/- 10% on labor hours. We consider this good, but
obviously an automated scheduling system won't appreciate it so much.

6. Job insertions can happen at will (though this particular bullet doesn't hit
too often)

7. We're not "finite" in our resources, but we're also not infinite (we're
limited by people and how much overtime they can work).

Options we've tried/looking at:

1. Schedule finite - this worked for about the first day when a +/- ran over.

2. Babysit schedule constantly rescheduling as operations finish - not feasible

3. Put a 3-4 week "lock" on schedule where we cannot allow insertions - not
likely

At this point we typically backwards schedule a job from a due date. We then
order parts for 1 week in advance of the job start date. What inevitably happens

is we need to pull forward more than a week and have to run change PO
suggestions to update hundreds of material (most of our material is purchase
direct and our jobs can range from 10-500 line items).

Our key metrics we're trying to get out of it include:

1. On-time delivery

2. Future capacity

I'm not looking for a silver bullet - I believe our internal processes &
decisions often times hurt us as much as anything. I'm just looking for little
tips & tricks people in custom job shops with 10% +/- labor hours have come
devised to help make scheduling more effective.

Thanks for any insight anyone can bring,
Ken

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2
We've been live no Vantage for nearly 4 years now. We've come to terms with all "limitations" and made a lot of BPM changes to get Vantage to work best with our business. Our biggest hurdle has and continues to be Job Scheduling. The issues we have all stem from being a custom job shop who never tells the customer "no".

The discussions we've internally had lead us in circles, ultimately circling back to "how can we expect a computer system to perform with these parameters". So, I'm reaching out to the community to see if anyone else in a custom job shop has the same issues we have and what you've done to help improve scheduling.

Biggest hurdles:

1. Our jobs range from 1 hour jobs to 1000 hour jobs.

2. Our jobs range from 1 operation to 6 operations.

3. Our job flow is to push a job through from start to finish, not "when an operation can fit in" like Vantage finite scheduling

4. Our jobs are 90% unique.

5. Our job estimates can be +/- 10% on labor hours. We consider this good, but obviously an automated scheduling system won't appreciate it so much.

6. Job insertions can happen at will (though this particular bullet doesn't hit too often)

7. We're not "finite" in our resources, but we're also not infinite (we're limited by people and how much overtime they can work).

Options we've tried/looking at:

1. Schedule finite - this worked for about the first day when a +/- ran over.

2. Babysit schedule constantly rescheduling as operations finish - not feasible

3. Put a 3-4 week "lock" on schedule where we cannot allow insertions - not likely

At this point we typically backwards schedule a job from a due date. We then order parts for 1 week in advance of the job start date. What inevitably happens is we need to pull forward more than a week and have to run change PO suggestions to update hundreds of material (most of our material is purchase direct and our jobs can range from 10-500 line items).

Our key metrics we're trying to get out of it include:

1. On-time delivery

2. Future capacity

I'm not looking for a silver bullet - I believe our internal processes & decisions often times hurt us as much as anything. I'm just looking for little tips & tricks people in custom job shops with 10% +/- labor hours have come devised to help make scheduling more effective.

Thanks for any insight anyone can bring,
Ken


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
3
Ken,

I had similar problems in my company. We never say "no" to the client aswell. Our products are never similar, our resources are not finite or infinite either ( we hire temporary workers or allow them to work overtime) and our operation are never standard so if we need to reschedule I need to manually change each operation in the job (not doable at all).

We've been only working in Vantage for one year, but we are not using the Labor Entry module ( which I assume you do) so for now we don't keep track of the labor hours, so we do not need to constantly reschedule. My approach to this was to keep it simple with one operation, one resource and run PO suggestions, obtain the suggestions but ignore job dates and follow the dates that engineering select as desired dates ( I used UD fields in job entry). very rudimentary but it saves time than constantly rescheduling operations.

Now, in a few more months I will be in your shoes wondering how this can be done!I was thinking on adding a UDMenu that will display all operations per job, if an operation needs to be reschedule then select finish and start date and reschedule backwards.







--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, Ken Williams <kwilliams@...> wrote:
>
> We've been live no Vantage for nearly 4 years now. We've come to terms with all "limitations" and made a lot of BPM changes to get Vantage to work best with our business. Our biggest hurdle has and continues to be Job Scheduling. The issues we have all stem from being a custom job shop who never tells the customer "no".
>
> The discussions we've internally had lead us in circles, ultimately circling back to "how can we expect a computer system to perform with these parameters". So, I'm reaching out to the community to see if anyone else in a custom job shop has the same issues we have and what you've done to help improve scheduling.
>
> Biggest hurdles:
>
> 1. Our jobs range from 1 hour jobs to 1000 hour jobs.
>
> 2. Our jobs range from 1 operation to 6 operations.
>
> 3. Our job flow is to push a job through from start to finish, not "when an operation can fit in" like Vantage finite scheduling
>
> 4. Our jobs are 90% unique.
>
> 5. Our job estimates can be +/- 10% on labor hours. We consider this good, but obviously an automated scheduling system won't appreciate it so much.
>
> 6. Job insertions can happen at will (though this particular bullet doesn't hit too often)
>
> 7. We're not "finite" in our resources, but we're also not infinite (we're limited by people and how much overtime they can work).
>
> Options we've tried/looking at:
>
> 1. Schedule finite - this worked for about the first day when a +/- ran over.
>
> 2. Babysit schedule constantly rescheduling as operations finish - not feasible
>
> 3. Put a 3-4 week "lock" on schedule where we cannot allow insertions - not likely
>
> At this point we typically backwards schedule a job from a due date. We then order parts for 1 week in advance of the job start date. What inevitably happens is we need to pull forward more than a week and have to run change PO suggestions to update hundreds of material (most of our material is purchase direct and our jobs can range from 10-500 line items).
>
> Our key metrics we're trying to get out of it include:
>
> 1. On-time delivery
>
> 2. Future capacity
>
> I'm not looking for a silver bullet - I believe our internal processes & decisions often times hurt us as much as anything. I'm just looking for little tips & tricks people in custom job shops with 10% +/- labor hours have come devised to help make scheduling more effective.
>
> Thanks for any insight anyone can bring,
> Ken
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
4
We also never tell a customer no, and we do a good amount of customization. We
have a full time scheduler who's job is to take what Vantage has and determines
what jobs need to go out to the floor every day. Our production supervisors
also meet every morning to look at the schedule and prioritise. Bottom line,
human intervention and lots of communication.




________________________________
From: Ken Williams <kwilliams@...>
To: "vantage@yahoogroups.com" <vantage@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tue, August 10, 2010 6:53:01 PM
Subject: [Vantage] Job Scheduling Challenges for a Custom Job Shop

Â
We've been live no Vantage for nearly 4 years now. We've come to terms with all
"limitations" and made a lot of BPM changes to get Vantage to work best with our
business. Our biggest hurdle has and continues to be Job Scheduling. The issues
we have all stem from being a custom job shop who never tells the customer "no".

The discussions we've internally had lead us in circles, ultimately circling
back to "how can we expect a computer system to perform with these parameters".
So, I'm reaching out to the community to see if anyone else in a custom job shop
has the same issues we have and what you've done to help improve scheduling.

Biggest hurdles:

1. Our jobs range from 1 hour jobs to 1000 hour jobs.

2. Our jobs range from 1 operation to 6 operations.

3. Our job flow is to push a job through from start to finish, not "when an
operation can fit in" like Vantage finite scheduling

4. Our jobs are 90% unique.

5. Our job estimates can be +/- 10% on labor hours. We consider this good, but
obviously an automated scheduling system won't appreciate it so much.

6. Job insertions can happen at will (though this particular bullet doesn't hit
too often)

7. We're not "finite" in our resources, but we're also not infinite (we're
limited by people and how much overtime they can work).

Options we've tried/looking at:

1. Schedule finite - this worked for about the first day when a +/- ran over.

2. Babysit schedule constantly rescheduling as operations finish - not feasible

3. Put a 3-4 week "lock" on schedule where we cannot allow insertions - not
likely

At this point we typically backwards schedule a job from a due date. We then
order parts for 1 week in advance of the job start date. What inevitably happens
is we need to pull forward more than a week and have to run change PO
suggestions to update hundreds of material (most of our material is purchase
direct and our jobs can range from 10-500 line items).

Our key metrics we're trying to get out of it include:

1. On-time delivery

2. Future capacity

I'm not looking for a silver bullet - I believe our internal processes &
decisions often times hurt us as much as anything. I'm just looking for little
tips & tricks people in custom job shops with 10% +/- labor hours have come
devised to help make scheduling more effective.

Thanks for any insight anyone can bring,
Ken

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
5
Steven, mind if I ask how big your production is? How many employees/man hours or work cells? We have approximately 30 employees ~ 1400 weekly man hours across 8 work cells.

We’ve briefly discussed a full time scheduler, but resistance has been paying someone to do only that job given our size.

Ken


From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Steven Gotschall
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 4:51 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Vantage] Job Scheduling Challenges for a Custom Job Shop - Email found in subject



We also never tell a customer no, and we do a good amount of customization. We
have a full time scheduler who's job is to take what Vantage has and determines
what jobs need to go out to the floor every day. Our production supervisors
also meet every morning to look at the schedule and prioritise. Bottom line,
human intervention and lots of communication.

________________________________
From: Ken Williams <kwilliams@...<mailto:kwilliams%40intermountainelectronics.com>>
To: "vantage@yahoogroups.com<mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>" <vantage@yahoogroups.com<mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>>
Sent: Tue, August 10, 2010 6:53:01 PM
Subject: [Vantage] Job Scheduling Challenges for a Custom Job Shop


We've been live no Vantage for nearly 4 years now. We've come to terms with all
"limitations" and made a lot of BPM changes to get Vantage to work best with our
business. Our biggest hurdle has and continues to be Job Scheduling. The issues
we have all stem from being a custom job shop who never tells the customer "no".

The discussions we've internally had lead us in circles, ultimately circling
back to "how can we expect a computer system to perform with these parameters".
So, I'm reaching out to the community to see if anyone else in a custom job shop
has the same issues we have and what you've done to help improve scheduling.

Biggest hurdles:

1. Our jobs range from 1 hour jobs to 1000 hour jobs.

2. Our jobs range from 1 operation to 6 operations.

3. Our job flow is to push a job through from start to finish, not "when an
operation can fit in" like Vantage finite scheduling

4. Our jobs are 90% unique.

5. Our job estimates can be +/- 10% on labor hours. We consider this good, but
obviously an automated scheduling system won't appreciate it so much.

6. Job insertions can happen at will (though this particular bullet doesn't hit
too often)

7. We're not "finite" in our resources, but we're also not infinite (we're
limited by people and how much overtime they can work).

Options we've tried/looking at:

1. Schedule finite - this worked for about the first day when a +/- ran over.

2. Babysit schedule constantly rescheduling as operations finish - not feasible

3. Put a 3-4 week "lock" on schedule where we cannot allow insertions - not
likely

At this point we typically backwards schedule a job from a due date. We then
order parts for 1 week in advance of the job start date. What inevitably happens
is we need to pull forward more than a week and have to run change PO
suggestions to update hundreds of material (most of our material is purchase
direct and our jobs can range from 10-500 line items).

Our key metrics we're trying to get out of it include:

1. On-time delivery

2. Future capacity

I'm not looking for a silver bullet - I believe our internal processes &
decisions often times hurt us as much as anything. I'm just looking for little
tips & tricks people in custom job shops with 10% +/- labor hours have come
devised to help make scheduling more effective.

Thanks for any insight anyone can bring,
Ken

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6
Here at R.O.M. all of our products are made to order with only parts
coming out of inventory. We are a $25 million dollar company running
Vantage 6.1. Our inside sales people take the orders and configure the
product. One of our products is aluminum shutter doors that fit on fire
trucks. The door can be any size, any color with some 30 user selected
options that affect several hundred configuration parameters. The
inside sales person looks at what we call "the soft schedule" to
determine the week (based on capacities) in which it can be made -
usually 3 to 6 weeks out.



Next our scheduler then creates the hard daily schedule based on the
weekly schedule. This is really a batch schedule that may contain
anywhere from four hours to several days of work. This allows him to
optimize our daily/batch production schedule. To do this we developed
our own scheduling system using Microsoft Access. For the soft schedule
we download the open orders and print one line per order by product line
showing the necessary data such as part and quantity. We also show some
8 fields of critical data such as: on hold, painted, and other order
options that production finds helpful. This report is used by all the
inside sales people, schedulers, and production managers. It is our
second most used Access application. Our first is our Access Order
Acknowledgement Report.



The second application we developed is used by the scheduler which gives
him an Access form showing all of the jobs scheduled for the week. He
uses that to assigned the jobs to the daily/batch sequence. This
daily/batch sequence is what now controls all the printing of the
travelers, production labels, packing slips, etc. All of these are
printed with Access also. (This second app has now become four separate
apps - cloned and modified - because each of our three major product
lines - shutters, bulkheads, ramps plus parts orders are scheduled
differently.) This has allowed us to do a great deal of fine tuning for
each of these production lines.



We have been running and tuning this process for the last six years and
it is working well for us. Nearly all of our reports are produced with
Access. Most of the reason for this is because we are a custom shop and
we need information presented in a way that Vantage or any packaged
software can not give us. When we went with Vantage I converted the
Access production schedule that worked with our former ERP application
that we had installed in 1997.



I have also developed several other production scheduling systems for
others companies. Needless to say it seems that every company has
unique challenges in this area especially when you deal with custom
products.



To get what you want or need you may have to develop your own production
scheduling system.



Lon A. Wiksell

R.O.M. Corporation

816-318-8000

Cell: 913-219-6565

________________________________

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Steven Gotschall
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 5:51 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Vantage] Job Scheduling Challenges for a Custom Job Shop





We also never tell a customer no, and we do a good amount of
customization. We
have a full time scheduler who's job is to take what Vantage has and
determines
what jobs need to go out to the floor every day. Our production
supervisors
also meet every morning to look at the schedule and prioritise. Bottom
line,
human intervention and lots of communication.

________________________________
From: Ken Williams <kwilliams@...
<mailto:kwilliams%40intermountainelectronics.com> >
To: "vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com> "
<vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com> >
Sent: Tue, August 10, 2010 6:53:01 PM
Subject: [Vantage] Job Scheduling Challenges for a Custom Job Shop


We've been live no Vantage for nearly 4 years now. We've come to terms
with all
"limitations" and made a lot of BPM changes to get Vantage to work best
with our
business. Our biggest hurdle has and continues to be Job Scheduling. The
issues
we have all stem from being a custom job shop who never tells the
customer "no".

The discussions we've internally had lead us in circles, ultimately
circling
back to "how can we expect a computer system to perform with these
parameters".
So, I'm reaching out to the community to see if anyone else in a custom
job shop
has the same issues we have and what you've done to help improve
scheduling.

Biggest hurdles:

1. Our jobs range from 1 hour jobs to 1000 hour jobs.

2. Our jobs range from 1 operation to 6 operations.

3. Our job flow is to push a job through from start to finish, not "when
an
operation can fit in" like Vantage finite scheduling

4. Our jobs are 90% unique.

5. Our job estimates can be +/- 10% on labor hours. We consider this
good, but
obviously an automated scheduling system won't appreciate it so much.

6. Job insertions can happen at will (though this particular bullet
doesn't hit
too often)

7. We're not "finite" in our resources, but we're also not infinite
(we're
limited by people and how much overtime they can work).

Options we've tried/looking at:

1. Schedule finite - this worked for about the first day when a +/- ran
over.

2. Babysit schedule constantly rescheduling as operations finish - not
feasible

3. Put a 3-4 week "lock" on schedule where we cannot allow insertions -
not
likely

At this point we typically backwards schedule a job from a due date. We
then
order parts for 1 week in advance of the job start date. What inevitably
happens
is we need to pull forward more than a week and have to run change PO
suggestions to update hundreds of material (most of our material is
purchase
direct and our jobs can range from 10-500 line items).

Our key metrics we're trying to get out of it include:

1. On-time delivery

2. Future capacity

I'm not looking for a silver bullet - I believe our internal processes &

decisions often times hurt us as much as anything. I'm just looking for
little
tips & tricks people in custom job shops with 10% +/- labor hours have
come
devised to help make scheduling more effective.

Thanks for any insight anyone can bring,
Ken

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]