What are the Inputs of the Operations Scheduling?

1. Performance standards –
a. First and the foremost need of the operations scheduling.
b. Helps the scheduler to find out the machine capacity in order to assign the required machine hours and the man – hours for the various activities.
c. The performance standards play a very important role in the good operations scheduling and this is always possible if the time study or the industrial engineering department exists in the plant.
d. The performance standards for such repetitive jobs are available.
e. And for the new jobs, they can be determined from the tables of the synthetic standards prepared by the department.

2. Unit of the measurement –
a. Means the unit in which the loading and also the scheduling is to be extended.
b. The most commonly used units of measurement in the engineering companies are the man – hours or the machine – hours.

3. Unit of the loading and the scheduling –
a. Means the duration for which the loading and the scheduling should be done.
b. The unit of the loading and the scheduling – scheduled start and the finishing timings – are mainly dependent on the scheduling needs of the company.
c. Scheduling should be done on the daily basis if the company makes promises in days.

4. Effective capacity per work centre –
a. Means the effective hours that can be used for the production on the machine or on the work centre in a week or in a month.
b. Theoretical capacity is equal to the number of the normal working hours of that machine.
c. Some interruptions may occur during the process and some of these interruptions can be summarized as follows –
i. Power failure.
ii. Rework.
iii. Waiting for transport.
iv. Preventive maintenance.
v. Waiting for the inspection.
vi. Tool try – out, jigs and the fixture try – outs.
vii. Operatives’ trade test.
viii. Operators involved in some other activities like the functions, celebrations etc. – leaving the production operations aside.
ix. Machine used for the technical studies.
x. Operator left the work place for the official decision.
xi. Machine breakdown – may be technical or mechanical in the nature.
xii. Operator absence.
xiii. Breakage in the tool.
xiv. Operator training time.
xv. Starting late.
xvi. Early close.
xvii. Over – time.
xviii. Incentive payment collection.

5. Extent of the rush orders –
a. When considering the scheduling process, the rush – orders play a very conclusive role.
b. Never a machine should be subjected to 100 % effective capacity, simply because of the reason that if any rush order comes in, and then the scheduling has to be changed.
c. The various methods used in the accommodation of the rush orders can be summarized as follows –
i. Leaving some capacity unscheduled on each machine per period.
ii. Leaving some in scheduled capacity between the two scheduled jobs.

6. Overlapping of the operations –
a. Means running of a job simultaneously on more than one machine.
b. Occurs in the jobs which involve two or more operations.
c. Reduces the manufacturing cycle time.
d. Reduces the delivery period to the customer.

7. Loading charts
a. These charts specify the work that is to be carried out in each section or the department of the company during the period under the review.
b. Helps in knowing the accumulated load at a given time for a given machine.
c. Helps in the identification of the periods that are available for the allocation in the future to orders needing this machine.