AA Autoroute Planner and Route Finder

What is a Production Schedule? And what are Process Routings?

A production schedule tells the operators what needs to happen in their work centre in order to fulfill customer orders. 

By way of example lets say we are making chocolate covered nuts and raisins. There are four work centres to schedule: roasting the nuts, mixing the ingredients to make chocolate, coating the nuts and raisins in chocolate and packaging the choc-nuts and choc-raisins into polypropylene bags. Roasting and Mixing run at the same time rather than one after the other, then Coating and finally Packaging. Raisins dont get roasted; only nuts go through Roasting. 

So the production schedule for raisins is mixing, coating, packaging whereas the production schedule for nuts is roasting, mixing, coating, packaging – right? WRONG. Those are actually process routings. No, not rootings; routings. Its pronounced rowtings. Reowtings. Rautings. And spelt r-o-u-t-i-n-g-s. Those familiar with MS Project will be familiar with the paradigm if not the phraseology. 

However in the same way that any one project or customer order or SKU tends to run through various work centres, so too, any one work centre tends to run various projects or customer orders or SKUs. 

So the production schedule for Roasting wont have any raisins but could include peanuts, and almonds. The production schedule for Mixing may have milk chocolate, dark chocolate and premium chocolate. The production schedule for Coating might include peanuts in premium chocolate, raisins in dark chocolate and almonds in milk chocolate. The production schedule for Packaging could potentially include a vast number of items with variations in style, color and size of packaging as well as the different products that packaging contains. 

With the benefit of a production schedule you can improve resource allocation and coordinate production. However before you do that it helps if you know what a production schedule actually is. 

Huh? You dont get it? Well which part do you not get? Oh, you don’t get why you spent about a trillion dollars on what looks to me like MS Project crossed with a bowl spaghetti. Oh well, like they say in Siberia: TOUGHSHITSKI!!!!!! 

Here is a brief, instructional excerpt from Oracle’s new and improved website for the purpose of exposition:
 
 ”You can also publish a dispatch list that enables each operator or work centre to view a prioritized list of work.”
 
Of course if you had a prioritized list of work for each work centre presumably you would know how many operators you need for that work centre. I mean you don’t draw up a timetable of teachers and classrooms without knowing how many teachers you need do you? 

Once you have a prioritized list of work for each work centre you can aggregate the number of operators in each work centre to ascertain operators required in the whole factory. Then aggregate operators and work centres in various factories to ascertain operators required across the enterprise. 

The benefits of labor planning are obviously decreased production costs. However more importantly, labor planning is associated with improved resource utilization leading to reduced lead times, more consistent product quality and improved customer service and Delivery-On-Time. These are the key determinants of sales revenue.
 
Theology:

<!– .ExternalClass .ecxhmmessage P {padding:0px;} .ExternalClass body.ecxhmmessage {font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana;} –>”The world contains a mixture of truth and untruth, sugar and sand.” Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna 

“When you come seeking sugar, they examine your bag to see what its capacity is; then they measure out accordingly.” Rumi
Excerpt from Essential Sufism by Robert Frager & Clifton Fadiman 
 
Methodology:

*  Process routings tell Sales the work centres associated with their particular order (or project or SKU.)  

*  A production schedule, or in Oracle’s language, a ‘dispatch list’ (although I would have thought ‘dispatch list’ is the production schedule for Dispatch) tells the operators the orders (or projects or SKUs) associated with their particular work centre.  

*  Production schedules are underpinned by process routings and form the basis for labor planning.  

*  The master schedule brings together all these disparate views of the supply and demand data onto one screen. This is to facilitate planning and enable your people to do their work effectively.

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This article is intended to be informative, non-exhaustive and, in places, satirical and does not reflect the view of any person or group. My next article will be a book review of Hugh Mackay’s novel HouseGuest in 2011 - the prequel is on search-o-rama.com