SCHEDULING

PART I
BY: GABRIELLE ANTONETTE MAGBOO RUBIO
 OPERATION SCHEDULE

Scheduling pertains to establishing both the timing and use of

resources within an organization. Under
the operations function (both manufacturing and
services), scheduling relates to use of equipment and facilities,
the scheduling of human activities, and receipt of materials
 WHEN DEVELOPING AN OPERATION
SCHEDULE, CONSIDER THESE:
• Are there some activities that can be done in parallel?
• Can the schedule be arranged to avoid bottlenecks?
• Is there someone else do some of the tasks for you?
• Are there some activities that can be postponed to another
time?
• Are there additional tasks because of the sequence you
choose to follow?
TO SCHEDULE EFFECTIVELY, YOU MUST
KNOW:

• What has to be done

• How long it should take to do
• Who must do it
• What its priority is
Note: Planning your schedule is the last step before
actually completing the tasks on the schedule.
 SCHEDULING OPERATIONS
A corporation’s total strategy delivers the background for making decisions in many
operational extents. Companies differentiate themselves based on:
1. Product volume (measures the total amount your company can produce over time)
2. Product variety (the number of variants in a family of products with similar
characteristics)
This differentiation affects how the company organizes its operations. A company
providing a high-volume, standardized, consistent-quality, lower-margin product or
services focuses on product and layout. Companies providing low-volume, customized,
higher-margin products or services, focus on process.
 HIGH-VOLUME OPERATIONS
High-volume operations, also called flow operations, can be
repetitive operations for discrete products or they can be continuous
operations for goods produced in a continuous flow. High-volume
standard items, either discrete or continuous, have smaller profit
margins, so cost efficiency is important. Companies achieve cost
efficiency in a high-volume operation through high levels of labor
and equipment utilization. Design of the work environment ensures
a smooth flow of products or customers through the system.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF FLOW OPERATION

Flow operations use fixed routings—the product or

service is always done the same way in the same
sequence with the same workstations. Routing provides
information about the operations to be performed, their
sequence. the work centers, and the time standards. The
workstations are arranged sequentially according to the
routing.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF FLOW OPERATION

Similar processing times are needed at each workstation

to achieve a balanced line. Workstations are dedicated to
a single product or a limited family of products. They
use special-purpose equipment and tooling. In a service
operation, individuals performing a specific but limited
activity are the equivalent of special-purpose equipment.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF FLOW OPERATION

Material flows between workstations may be automated. A

well-designed system minimizes work-in-process inventory and
reduces the throughput time for the product or service. The
design of the production line dictates the capacity of the flow
system. Bottleneck is a facility, department, or resource whose
capacity is less than the demand placed on it.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF FLOW OPERATION

• The workstation or processing point that needs the greatest amount of

time is the system’s bottleneck, which determines how many products or
services the system can complete. Thus the goal is to sequence the
operations so they need the least control possible.
• A major concern with flow operations is employee boredom with
repetitive tasks. Companies use techniques like job enrichment, job
enlargement, and job rotation to reduce boredom and maximize line
output.
 LOW-VOLUME OPERATIONS

Low-volume or job-shop operations are used for high-quality,

customized products. Companies with low-volume operations
use highly skilled employees, general-purpose equipment, and
a process layout. The objective is flexibility, both in product
variation and product volume. Equipment is not dedicated to
particular jobs but is available for all jobs.
 LOW-VOLUME OPERATIONS

In low-volume operations, products are made to order. Each

product or service can have its own routing through a unique
sequence of workstations, processes, materials, or setups.
setups. As a result, scheduling is complex. The workload
must be distributed among the work centers or service
personnel. A useful tool for viewing the schedule and
workload is a Gantt chart.
 GANTT CHART

Gantt charts are named after Henry Gantt, who developed

these charts in the early 1900s. A Gantt chart is a visual
representation of a schedule over time. It is a planning and
control chart designed to graphically show workloads or to
monitor job progress. Two kinds of Gantt charts are the
load chart and the progress chart.
 The load chart shows the planned workload and idle
times for a group of machines or individual
employees or for a department. It is a chart that
visually shows the workload relative to the capacity
at a resource.
LOAD
CHART
 Progress Chart is the progress chart monitors job progress by showing
the relationship between planned performance and actual performance.
It is a chart that visually shows the planned schedule compared to
actual performance. Gantt charts provide a visual image of the progress
of jobs through the system.

PROGRESS
CHART
 FOR USEFUL AND MORE INSIGHTS, VISIT
THESE LINKS:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB0wsdmV3Sw\
• https://www.gantt.com/
 • Two kinds of work scheduling or work
loading are infinite loading and finite loading.
SCHEDULING Infinite loading schedules work without
WORK regard to capacity limits. They let you know
how much capacity you need to meet a
schedule.
Manufacturing companies can use infinite
loading according to a proposed master
production schedule (MPS). A service
organization like a law firm can use infinite
loading to identify the resources needed to
INFINITE
complete the proposed case load. Infinite
loading identifies uneven workloads and
LOADING
bottlenecks. Infinite loading is the
scheduling that calculates the capacity
needed at work centers in the time period
needed without regard to the capacity
available to do the work.
Finite loading is an operational schedule
with start and finish times for each activity.
It does not allow you to load more work than
can be done with the available capacity. The FINITE
finite loading schedule shows how a LOADING
company plans to use available capacity at
each work center. In a manufacturing
company, the schedule shows the jobs to be
done at a particular work center if the work
center uses a set number of production hours
each day. Scheduling that loads work centers
up to a predetermined amount of capacity.
 • With forward scheduling, processing
starts immediately when a job is
received, regardless of its due date. Each
job activity is scheduled for completion
FORWARD
SCHEDULING as soon as possible, which allows you to
determine the job’s earliest possible
completion date. Forward schedule is
the one that determines the earliest
possible completion date for a job.
 With backward scheduling, you begin
scheduling the job’s last activity so that the
job is finished right on the due date. To do
this, you start with the due date and work
BACKWARD
backward, calculating when to start the last
SCHEDULING
activity, when to start the next-to-last
activity, and so forth. Backward
scheduling shows you how late the job can
be started and still be finished on time.
When you are using backward scheduling
and forward scheduling together, a
FORWARD AND
difference between the start time of the first
BACKWARD
activity indicates slack in the schedule.
Slack means that you can start a job
SCHEDULING
immediately but you do not have to do so.
You can start it any time up to the start time
in your backward schedule and still meet the
due date. Slack is the amount of time a job
can be delayed and still be finished by its
due date.
 • Input/output control is a capacity-control technique
used to monitor workflow at individual work centers. It
is a technique for monitoring the flow of jobs between
MONITORING work centers. Input/output control monitors the
WORKFLOW planned inputs and outputs at a work center against the
actual inputs and outputs. Planned inputs are based on
the operational schedule, whereas planned outputs use
capacity-planning techniques.
 Actual input is compared with planned
input to ensure that enough work enters
the measured work center. A work center
MONITORING cannot process items that have not yet
WORKFLOW arrived. Actual output is used to identify
possible problems in the work center,
such as an equipment problem or
unexpected absences.
HOW TO SEQUENCE
JOBS
When several jobs need to be done,
how do you decide which one to do
first? Do you work on the job that you
have to finish first? The job you enjoy
doing? The job you can finish the
fastest? The job that has the biggest
payoff? When you decide which job to
do first, you are sequencing them.
 HOW TO SEQUENCE
JOBS
The eleventh edition of the APICS Dictionary
defines operation sequencing or job
sequencing as a technique for short-term
planning of actual jobs to be run in each work
center based on capacity and priorities. We
expect a work center to have several jobs
waiting to be processed, so we decide on the
sequence for processing the jobs. Operation
sequencing sets projected start and finish times
and expected queues (waiting line). A job’s
priority is its position in the sequence.
 Job priority is often set by a priority rule. It
determines the priority of jobs at a work center.
Priority rules are typically classified as local or global.
PRIORITY A local priority rule sets priority based only on the
jobs waiting at that individual work center. Global
RULES priority rules, like critical ratio or slack over
remaining operations, set priority according to factors
such as the scheduled workload at the remaining
workstations that the job must be processed through.
 PRIORITY RULES

Local Priority Rule Global Priority Rule

Makes a priority decision based on jobs Makes a priority decision based on

currently at that work center. information that includes the remaining
work centers a job must pass through.

A work center needs priority rules when multiple jobs await processing (but not if
only a single job needs processing). Priority rules assume that there is no variability in
either the setup time or the run time of the job.
COMMONLY
USED
PRIORITY
RULES
 HOW TO USE PRIORITY RULES
Using priority rules is straightforward. Just follow these steps:
• Step 1 Decide Which Priority Rule to Use. Different priority rules
achieve different results. We will discuss this when we look at
performance measurements.
• Step 2 List All the Jobs Waiting to Be Processed at the Work Center and
Their Job Time. Job time includes setup and processing time.
• Step 3 Using Your Priority Rule, Determine Which Job Has the Highest
Priority
and Should Be Worked on First, Second, Third, and So On.
 MEASURING PERFORMANCE

Companies measure scheduling effectiveness according to their

competitive priorities. Mean job flow time and the mean
number of jobs in the system each measure a company’s
responsiveness. If your company competes on cost, it is
concerned with efficiency. If on-time delivery is of primary
concern, the company measures on-time delivery performance.
 MEASURING PERFORMANCE

Makespan measures efficiency; mean job lateness and mean job

tardiness measure due-date performance. After looking at
airline scheduling, we discuss different performance measures.
Makespan is the amount of time it takes to finish a batch of
jobs.
 JOB FLOW TIME

Job flow time measures response time—the time a job spends

in the shop, from the time it is ready to be worked on until it is
finished. It includes waiting time, setup time, process time,
and possible delays. It is the measurement of the time a job
spends in the shop before it is finished. We calculate job flow
time as”
Job flow time = time of completion - time job was first
available for processing
 AVERAGE NUMBER OF JOBS IN THE SYSTEM

The average number of jobs in the system

measures the work-in-process inventory and
also affects response time. The greater the
number of jobs in the system, the longer the
queues and subsequently the longer the job
flow times. If quick customer response is
critical to your company, the number of jobs
waiting in the system should be relatively
low.
 MAKESPAN

Makespan measures efficiency by telling us

how long it takes to finish a batch of jobs. To
calculate makespan, we subtract the starting
time of the first job from the completion time
of the last job in the group. Note that
makespan has no link to customer due dates:
you can have an efficient schedule in terms of
finishing a batch of jobs but still have
relatively poor customer service.
 Job lateness, a measure of customer service, is the
difference between the time a job is finished and the
JOB LATENESS time it is supposed to be finished (its due date). When a
job is finished ahead of schedule, it has negative
AND lateness. Positive job lateness values are typically
TARDINESS described as job tardiness. Tardiness indicates how
many days pass after the due date before the job is
completed.