Good morning,
I setup a sample job for testing the scheduling features in Epicor. I have a resource group for Machine Operators, with two day shift resources, and two night shift resources. The calendars are setup at the resource level for day/night hours. I also have a production calendar set at the company level that includes day and night shift hours.
When I schedule a job that utilizes those resource groups, I expect the system to choose the first available machine resource, and the first available operator resource. Since I setup the calendars at the resource level, I expect the system to choose a day or night shift depending on what time the job shows up at this machine.
However, it looks to me like it is ignoring the day/night shifts. I forward scheduled my job to start at 11am today. But the first machine operator shows a night shift resource, starting at 11am today.
I am using finite scheduling (turned on finite capacity at the resource level). I set finite horizon at site level to 90 days, and also set finite horizon at the resource group level to 90 days.
I am certain that I am setting something up wrong. Can anyone suggest what/where that might be?
Bah! I think I see the issue. My first operation started in the day shift, but extended into the night shift by half an hour. Realistically, the day shift would probably stay and finish their operation. But the schedule assumes that night shift will start the op at 11am, which isn’t possible.
for now, just to understand how it is setup, I changed the first operation to take less than an hour. Now it correctly assigns a day shift resource to the first operation.
Using the above example, If an operation starts at 7am, and is going to take 47 hours to complete, it will take 4ish working days. The schedule only uses one day shift resource, and assumes that night shift wont work on that operation. In reality, after day shift leaves, night shift will pickup where day shift left off. Completing the operation in half as many days.
How do I setup my resources/groups/jobs to reflect this reality? Will we need the advanced planning and scheduling module for this?
It looks like I should be using multiple scheduling blocks and split operations for the machine’s resource group. I set my scheduling blocks for the machines RG to 2, and I turned on split operations. But when I reschedule the job, it is still just putting one day shift person on the operation for all 40 hours.
Again, I am sure I am using the system wrong somehow. Any advice is appreciate!
Running a job on both shifts seems like it would be a common practice. Why is this so difficult to reflect accurately in Epicor? I don’t mind doing the work to get it setup correctly. I just can’t figure out what that work is!
@jgiese.wci is right @NateS . I too have sought the elusive cross-shift job scheduling holy grail. I’ve talked to many at Epicor and no-one can think of a way to do it, and it’s ben confirmed that the core scheduler does not handle it. We’re currently plotting a way of using ‘virtual’ resources that are available for 16 hrs a day on one shift… it’s the closet we’ve come to a solution.
Now - having said that, Mattec MES bolt-on module DOES schedule across shifts. If you’re not doing any of the machine connections (HMI,PLC, etc.) then the cost may be tolerable as a solution. But since it synchs with ERP, you’ll have to manage that synch processing and it’s problems when they occur.
Currently, each operation is set up with two resources - a machine and an operator - each in their own resource group. So we have the same scheduling problem you do as we work at least 2 and sometimes 3 shifts. Currently we continue jobs across shifts when we need to, and the schedule calculation ‘catches’ up after the fact.
Virtual Operators - the approach is that we will have an average number of operators in the operator group matched to a machine group. This average represents the normal average number of workers/hours we have during a 16 hour day. If there are 10 on first shift and 8 on second shift, then the average is 9. The machine group will have the right number of machines of course. At that point the schedule will more closely schedule jobs to our reality, and our job will to simply put a real person on a machine when needed.
Virtual operators disconnect the employee and their calendar from the schedule. We’ve not found a way around this, but we would like the scheduler to know when people are available or not. We looked at some BPMs but that is way too complicated in the end.
Alternative - A twist on this is the idea of ‘flexing’ operators skilled on a variety of machines. We may end up with only one operator group and many machine groups, but still using the same principles.
Alternative - Our team has not decided if they want to keep ‘operators’ as a resource or not. It can be done either way, and there are definitively two camps on the subject. We really do not need them, as long as we keep the number of active/available machines below the number of operators.
I think that this might be the magic you are looking for… it has been a while since i tested this, but if you allow split operations, then i believe that the system will allow the resource to change across shifts/days.
I turned split operations on for our Machine Operators resource group. By itself, this does not seem to change the way a job is scheduled. I am looking at op 30 in a sample job, where the operation will take 40 hours. The schedule books one machine from the mills resource group, and one machine operator shift from the MO resource group. It books the one night resource (in this case the op starts after day shift ends), for all 40 hours of work, split over four ten hour night shifts.
So I tried changing the number of scheduling blocks to two for op 30, thinking that it might allow what I am trying to do. Instead the schedule just assumes we now have the ability to split the operation between two resources. So it books two different machines and two different night shifts. It runs for half the time, finishing in only two night shifts, but it never schedules the next available shift to keep the operation running until it is done.
This is exactly what I’ve found as well. The ‘split’ and other variables all apply, but once the scheduler selects the machine (or person) resource, the operation is pinned to that resource and it’s calendar until the operation is complete.
Have you tried updating the Machine Resource Calendar to span the entire 2 or 3 shift time span? In this way, it may see the Resource as available for both shifts, and then still be able to switch operators based on their individual pared down shift calendars? I had to use this work around with another ERP system, have not tried it in E10.
Nate, just read your post on scheduling shifts. I posted the same exact question yesterday. No replies. I assume you have not found the magic bullet solution in the last month, have you?
Chris
@Chris_B and @NateS
I have been asking around inside Epicor for 2 years on this one and I can tell you that it does not - will not - allow a job to cross shifts (one machine, two different operators). This is a problem at the code level b/c the scheduling algorithm assigns the required resources and ‘cannot’ reassign resources.
@Chris_B - I missed your post, my apologies. I would have answered similarly to this longer post. But don’t forget there are some out-of-the-box options - Virtual operators on 16+ hour shifts, not using operators at all, working the job as if the scheduler did what we wanted and letting it ‘catch up’ after the fact, and lastly - a bolt-on solution like Mattec.
