Chapter ten

Short-term scheduling
Learning objectives
 Define scheduling as a function of the operations manager
 Explain the importance of short-term scheduling
 Discuss scheduling criteria
 Describe how supply and demand influence scheduling
 Explain the scheduling operations in an organisation
 Understand loading of work centres
 Use and interpret Gannt charts
 Understand and create sequencing diagrams for work centres
 Discuss commonly used priority rules
 Describe the limitations of rule-based dispatching
 Understand constrained work centres
 Explain services scheduling

10.1 INTRODUCTION
• Amount of resources – when and how much of equipment, facilities and all
human activities required
• Type of business does not play a major role – in a manufacturing environment
production must be scheduled. The scheduling department needs to develop
schedules for the workforce, machinery to be used, and the procurement
function, maintenance of the machinery and for the product of the
organisation.
• Therefore scheduling can be seen as the final step in transformation process
of raw material into final product
• Scheduling is part of decision-making process and needs proper
consideration. Decision that managers have to take concern the size of the
workforce, the capacity of the organisation, type of machinery to be used, type
of maintenance to do and training to be done.
• Constraints – is a limitation: availability of labour, material, money etc.

10.2 IMPORTANCE OF SHORT TERM SCHEDULING

 To make use of scares resources more efficiently
 Faster delivery of customers goods

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  Correct scheduling offers competitive advantage

10.3 SCHEDULING CRITERIA

Ensuring that the correct scheduling techniques are used is very important. The
techniques employed depend on the number of orders placed, the type of business
and the complexity of the products manufactured. Table 10.1 shows the four main
criteria that must be taken into account:
Table 10.1 The four main scheduling criteria
Criterion Considerations

Minimize time to complete a job The measure of performance is the

average completion time per job

Utilisation resources maximised Percentage that facility is utilised or

actually used productively

Inventory of WIP should be minimised Average number of jobs: High WIP

inventory requires high number of jobs

Time that customers wait minimised Length of a queue, or the number of days
that items are late

10.4 THE INFLUENCE OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND ON SCHEDULING

• To be able to schedule any type of operation properly, managers need to
know and understand the nature of supply and demand. This is the planning
and control phase of the process.
– Supply uncertainty: with some operations it is quite easy to predict
the supply. These types of organisations need very little control. With
other instances, operations hardly ever stick to laid –down plans. To
ensure a dependently supply all the transformed recourses (material,
machines, money and man power) have to be constantly available. A
shortage of any of these will result in the interruption of the production
process and no supply can occur.
– Demand uncertainty: In some instances demand is reasonably
certain. Unfortunately in most type of operations demand tends to be
uncertain. I f a new product is launched there is a big uncertainty on
how the market will accept the product for example Volkswagen
advertised its new Beetle design, the demand outstripped
Volkswagen’s supply, and some customers had to wait for their new
Beetles.

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 – Dependent versus independent demand: Dependent demand is
certain that a demand will be placed on an organisation. Orders have
already been places by schools at my company for next month for
2000 tracksuits. Raw material used will depended on the 2000
tracksuits placed.
Other types of companies cannot do that. The reason they have no
forward visibility such as Pick n Pay and Spar. Therefore the
supermarkets usually guess what the demand will be. Demand
decisions will be taken on experience. The planning and control
decisions are made independently of what is actually happening.
Therefore supermarkets can have a risk of not to satisfy customers
because running out of stock and the end result loss of sale.

10.5 SCHEDULING OF OPERATIONS IN AN ORGANISATION: HIGH VOLUME

SCHEDULING
• Decisions: workloads for machines and workers and sequence of jobs.
• High degree of standardisation – in mass production in producing 3000
tracksuits per month for instance i.e a flow system with high volume
production with standardised activities and equipment.
 Line balancing – sometimes also known as line flow manufacturing (mass
manufacturing). In flow type organisations, there might be a need for
automation and specialised material-handling equipment. The best operation
takes place when there is a highly uniform output. For this reason table 10.2
play a major role in the success of the system

• Number of product/service – mass production

Table 10.2 Success for automation and specialised material handling
FACTOR CONSIDERATIONS
Minimise quality Quality problems can be most of the time disruptive
problems issues. In most cases quality problems usually require
the production process to shut down. This means loss
of production.
Carry out preventive To ensure that machines and equipment function
maintenance properly at all times. The result smooth operation of the
production process.
Ensure on-time When materials are unavailable, this leads to an
delivery of materials interruption of the workflow and should be avoided.
Three methods of ensuring reliable supply of materials:
1. Shortening the delivery lead-times from the
supplier
2. Developing reliable delivery schedules for
materials
3. Properly forecasting material needs

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 Optimise product A number of techniques are available to assist in this
mixes regard such as linear programming. This technique will
help to maximise the profit and minimise the cost.
Repair breakdowns The longer the period for which a piece of machinery or
as soon as possible equipment breaks down, the bigger the impact on
production. Definite need that critical spares are
available.
Ensure properly The most important requirement here is to ensure that
designed products the product that has been designed can be
and processes manufactured easily.

10.6 SCHEDULING OF OPERATIONS IN AN ORGANISATION: LOW-VOLUME

SYSTEM SCHEDULING
• Loading:
- What loading is
- Gantt charts
- Finite vs.infinite loading
- Horizontal vs. vertical loading
- Forward vs. backward scheduling
- Input/output control
• Sequencing

o Loading: Loading is assigning particular jobs to particular

machines and workers. Most organisations have different
work centres where machines are grouped together. When
loading takes place the jobs are assigned to the correct work
centres. A particular machine in a particular work centre can
do only one particular job, loading does not present the real
problem.
o Gantt charts: are used to give a visual perspective of what
can be expected and are widely used in loading and
scheduling operations. Universities are making use of Gantt
charts for allocating lecture halls. By first doing scheduling
using the Gantt chart the manager responsible eliminates the
possibility that two lecturers will be assigned the same hall.
Below follow a typical example of Gantt chart.
o Finite loading: Actual capacities available for each work
centre and the actual time taken for each job will be taken
into account. This will avoid exceeding the available
expenditure.
o Infinite loading: Jobs are loaded onto the work centre
without taking the available capacity of the work centre into
consideration. End result of this is bottlenecks and queues.

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 o Vertical loading: Jobs are loaded onto a work centre job by
job. Related to infinite loading and does not take capacity
into account.
o Horizontal loading: The job with the highest priority loaded
first and job with lowest priority loaded last.
o Forward scheduling: Date from start doing the order to the
date of delivering. Scheduling moves forward from a certain
point in time. The date of receipt of an order from the
customer.
o Backward scheduling: Scheduling is done from delivery
date backwards.
FIGURE 10.1 A typical Gantt chart
WORK MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY
CENTRE
Drilling X X Job B X Job F
Boring Job A Job D X Job E M
Milling M M Job E X Job G
Deburring X Job H Job D Job B X

• X: No jobs will be loaded on the work centre for the particular day.
• Job A, Job B, etc.: A specific job has been loaded on the work centre and it is
fully loaded.
• M: The work centre is unavailable due to scheduled maintenance being
carried out.

• Sequencing

• What is sequencing: Determines the workload of machines or

work centres, determine the specific machines or work centres
to be used. Sequencing determine the order in which machines
will be used.
• Basic steps in sequencing: Is the order in which a job will be
handled be the different work centres. Sequencing means the
path of the jobs will follow from machine to machine. In some
instances some work centres can be overloaded and others not.
In practice this is very difficult.
• Priority rules:
• The due dates and processing times for every job become
very important. That is why in these situations managers
make use of job times, include set-up and processing times.

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 • Some assumptions applied when sequencing rules are used.
 The number of jobs are known. Once processing of
jobs have started, no new jobs arrive.
 No machine breakdowns, accidents or worker
absenteeism will take place. No interruptions are
allowed.
 The processing times used are seen as deterministic
rather that a variable.
 Regardless of the order in which jobs are sequenced,
set-up times remain independent.
• Measuring the effectiveness of sequencing:
o How effective sequencing is can be measured by
performance measurements. The following performance
measures are the most frequently used:
o Job flow time: The length of time that a job spends at a work
centre or machine. Not only the processing but also the
waiting time, transportation time, waiting time for repair work
etc. Managers can determine the average flow time for a
particular work centre or machine by dividing the total time
taken by the number of jobs performed.
o Job lateness: The length of the time by which the date the
job was promised to a customer will be exceeded.
o Makespan: The time required to complete a group of jobs.
o Average number of jobs: All the jobs that are at the work
centre or at the machine at any given time are seen as WIP
and classified as WIP inventory.

Calculation is: Average number of jobs = Total flow time

Makespan

10.8 CONSTRAINED WORK CENTRES

• Physical constraints: might include availability of employees, raw material and
supplies.
• Non-physical constraints: Might include procedures, employee morale and
employee empowerment.
• Dealing with bottlenecks:
– Capacity can be increased
– Cross-training of employees
– Rerouting work
– Schedule work that throughout rates matches the capacity

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10.9 SERVICES SCHEDULING
• Differs from the scheduling of production of goods in the following ways:
– In services it is the personnel who must be scheduled
– Hardly any inventory in a service environment
– Services are highly labour intensive and therefore the staffing levels
might differ from time period to time period.