Manufacturers generally agree that manual scheduling is the most difficult, stressful job impacting everyone who works in the business. Insufficient inventory for jobs with quick due dates, moving up hot jobs for customers, frustrated employees and schedulers not knowing if move ups can be done without throwing other jobs off track are just a few of the daily dilemmas that affect a scheduler.
Fortunately, there is a way to make your day to day easier and get rid of manual scheduling forever. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software can automatically schedule jobs.
Imagine a world where your scheduling keeps your shop organized and prioritized, making it easier to finish jobs on time, improve manufacturing quality, enhance efficiency throughout the business and deliver jobs to customers without delay. If a customer needs to get his job done quicker, ERP will plan it.
You’re not alone in wanting that level of control: a significant portion of manufacturers – about 80% of small and medium-sized companies with more than $10 million in revenue – use ERP to simplify their scheduling. Those who don’t pay a continual price of frequent rescheduling, missed deadlines, overlapping jobs, inefficient use of resources, poor communication and inaccurate lead times.
Manual schedulers understand the innate problems that come with it. Many blame errors in spreadsheets, poor inventory management or incorrect material purchasing as the reasons why jobs aren’t finished on time. The company then hires more schedulers to manage the chaos, which adds to the complexity of the scheduling process and increases overhead costs.
Cut through all that noise. ERP automates, simplifies and reduces the scheduling of work orders, machines and people. The software serves as a central communication hub for all scheduling activities, including easy tracking of everything you need to know about every job from beginning to end, such as labor costs, machine efficiency, setup and run times, work in progress (WIP) and on-time completion rates. Everything previously done on spreadsheets, whiteboards or in your head is handled instantly and error-free by the ERP system.
With ERP in place, scheduling is completely automated. The software tracks what you’re making, how you’re making it, how many you’re making and WIP at any given moment, which gives you the confidence to say exactly when the job will be done.
The greatest manufacturers are using the powerful ERP module, Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS), to schedule, reschedule and manage their production process. Here are just a few of their experiences.
APS simplifies multiple-shift management by allowing flexible workweek scheduling. Planners can schedule each machine for anywhere from 40 to 100 hours a week, depending on workload and due dates. APS makes it easy to see where schedulers have available time should they need to move up a job or push others out.
APS gives CMPI complete control over the scheduling process. The ability to easily make scheduling adjustments and see how it will affect other jobs down the road has revolutionized their scheduling and on-time delivery.
A quick look at where capacity issues might arise in the weeks ahead is easy using APS. When faced with conflicting delivery dates on large jobs, they can easily adjust capacity by adding shifts or moving people and workcenters around. APS gives them a high degree of flexibility to accommodate what their customers request.
When a customer needs a quick product, automatic schedulers look at the capacity in APS which gives them the confidence to deliver on time. Instead of promising their standard four-week lead time, they can move up delivery dates based on what the system tells them they can do.
The dilemmas caused by manual scheduling – the lost jobs, departure of valuable customers, inventory and spreadsheet mistakes, failure of not knowing when jobs can be completed in time, employee frustration due to lack of efficiency on the shop floor – create a production environment that’s bound to fail. If scheduling dilemmas continually prevent your manufacturing business from achieving growth, quality and satisfied customers, it’s time to learn what ERP software can do for you.