We have job operations that require a large number of hours to complete. Our work is make to order, so we rarely build the same part twice. As a result, our estimated hours are a best guess and often need adjustment. Our machine operators and builders often provide an estimate of how much time they believe is remaining, based on the number of hours we’ve clocked so far, and the amount of work left to perform.
When we are in the midst of a job, we would like to be able to adjust the estimated hours remaining, without losing the original estimated hours.
What is the appropriate way to make these ‘live’ adjustments? Is there anything we can do apart from updating the Prod Standard on the job operation? In the Job Scheduling Board I see that operations can be moved around, but I didn’t see a way to increase or reduce the number of hours remaining.
A wish list item for us is to allow the machine operator or builder to submit an ‘adjustment’ to the estimated hours remaining when they end a labor activity in MES. Customization, I’m sure. But when I get the hours ‘adjustment’ value from the operator, what should I do with it? Update the job operation, or some other method call?
We picture our users working on a job for the day, then at the end of the day, they look at what is left and determine the remaining time. When the user sends back that remaining time we have to do something with it, otherwise the schedule has no idea. Our thought was to take this estimated time remaining, and then update the job to reflect that somehow.
This is where I got stuck too. I think that we may need to change the “Load Relieved By” from Quantity to Hours maybe. But that change seems a bit larger than I wanted to get into.
What I had in mind was to create a UD field “UD_OriginalProdStandard_c” on JobOper. This field would be updated each time the prodStandard is changed on the job operation (Method Directive).
But, once the operation is started (at least on labor transaction), the “UD_OriginalProdStandard_c” would not be updated ; only the prodStandard.
This way, you can update the “actual estimated time” on the operation by updating the prod standard (which will update the scheduling boards) while keeping the last original estimate in “UD_OriginalProdStandard_c”.
I would love to hear someone else’s suggestion on this too.
@mbilodeau great minds think alike. I had already started on a customization just like you mentioned… but thought maybe there was a better way, and posted here…
