It’s is certainly possible to improve the production efficiency in many plants by improving the way in which schedules are arranged. This is especially true when the schedule is arranged using an advanced planning solution. One way that the efficiencies can be improved is to reduce the amount of transition time between jobs.

Improving transition times and retooling times means that more time is devoted to production and less time is spent creating scrap and machine downtime. Obviously a reduction in scrap is not only a green manufacturing advantage but a monetary advantage as well. One of the best ways to reduce downtimes is to arrange the production sequence so that similar schedules are arranged together. This is something that most schedulers have learned to do in order to build a productive lineup. Unfortunately it’s not always the only consideration that a scheduler must deal with.

In most production environments there are a myriad of other constraints that must be considered as well. Some common constraints might include: delivery dates, tooling requirements and raw material availability. These limitations are quite often juggled to create the most ideal apparent to the scheduler.

There are tools that can be used to help a scheduler take advantage of opportunity’s that might go unseen in the schedule. One of the tools that we like to consider is a scheduling system that incorporates genetic algorithms. A genetic algorithm is simply a scheduling system with a little bit of artificial intelligence built into it. The AI shuffles the schedule until it comes up with a sequence that the scheduler is happy with.

These types of systems are available from companies like Tuppas and ShopFloorReporting.com and they’re certainly worth checking out. Here is another site on scheduling that you may wish to take a look at as well the site is called the production scheduling software portal and there are a lot of articles and reviews.