Scheduling jobs is one of the most important tasks in manufacturing. It’s complex. It’s demanding and it can result in costly mistakes that impact productivity, profitability and customer relationships.
Many manufacturing businesses complain that scheduling is their biggest pain point. Its chaotic, complicated, erroneous and static.
Do any of these common scheduling scenarios sound familiar?
- You create a schedule manually from Gant charts, ERP software and spreadsheets.
- You update a schedule manually on a whiteboard or in a spreadsheet.
- Your scheduling uncertainty frequently results in unnecessary overtime or inventory buildup.
- You are not confident about making customer deadlines.
- Your scheduling and production tend to be reactive rather than proactive.
- You schedule work only in buckets rather than true capacity planning.
- Your planner/scheduler has to walk the factory floor to determine in-progress job status.
- You cannot build in changeovers, startup rejects and maintenance into your schedule.
- Your scheduling software is not linked to production machines (not live).
Scheduling is the most common pain point that starts many manufacturing businesses on a journey to implementing Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software.
It’s true, a genuine MES really does solve production scheduling chaos, drudgery and guesswork. It allows users to drag and drop work orders into a schedule that is linked to the production machines. Real time production data also allows users to monitor and adjust the schedule on the fly.
AspectPL MES is not just a scheduling saviour. It also enables your production floor to become a productivity machine. Click here to read how customers have improved their manufacturing productivity
