WORK CENTER

SCHEDULING

Chapter Twenty-Two
McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2014 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
 LO22-1: Explain work center scheduling.
 LO22-2: Analyze scheduling problems using priority
rules and more specialized techniques.
 LO22-3: Apply scheduling techniques to the
manufacturing shop floor.
 LO22-4: Analyze employee schedules in the service
sector.

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Manufacturing Execution Systems
 Manufacturing execution system (MES): an information
system that schedules, dispatches, tracks, monitors, and
controls production
 Real-time linkage to:
 MRP
 Product and process planning
 Systems that extend beyond the factory
 Service execution system (SES): an information system that
links schedules, dispatches, tracks, monitors, and controls the
customer’s encounters with the service organization

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The Nature and Importance of
Work Centers
 Work center: an area in which production resources
are organized and work is completed
 May be a single machine, a group of machines, or an
area where work is done
 Can be organized according to function, product in a
flow, or group technology
 Jobs need to be routed between functionally
organized work centers to complete the work

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Loading
 Infinite loading: work is assigned to a work center
based on what is needed
 No consideration to capacity
 Finite loading: schedules each resource using the
setup and run time required for each order
 Determines exactly what will be done by each resource
at every moment during the day

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Scheduling
 Forward scheduling: the system takes an order and
schedules each operation that must be completed
forward in time
 Can tell the earliest date an order can be completed
 Backward scheduling: starts with due date and
schedules the required operations in reverse
sequence
 Can tell when an order must be started in order to be
done by a specific date

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Limitations
 Machine-limited process: equipment is the critical
resource that is scheduled
 Labor-limited process: people are the key resource
that is scheduled
 Most actual processes are either labor limited or
machine limited but not both

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Types of Manufacturing Processes and
Scheduling Approaches

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Typical Scheduling and Control
Functions
1. Allocating orders, equipment, and
personnel
2. Determining the sequence of order
performance
3. Initiating performance of the scheduled
work
4. Shop-floor control

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Objectives of Work-Center Scheduling

1. Meet due dates

2. Minimize lead time
3. Minimize setup time or cost
4. Minimize work-in-process inventory
5. Maximize machine utilization

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Job Sequencing
 Sequencing: the process of determining the job
order on machines or work centers
 Also known as priority sequencing
 Priority rules: the rules used in obtaining a job
sequence
 Can be simple or complex
 Can use one or more pieces of information

 Common rules shown on next slide

22-11
Priority Rules for Job Sequencing

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Standard Measures of Schedule
Performance
1. Meeting due dates
2. Minimizing the flow time
3. Minimizing work-in-process inventory
4. Minimizing idle time

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Example 22.1: n Jobs on One Machine

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Example 22.1: FCFS and SOT Rules

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Example 22.1: EDD and LCFS Rules

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Example 22.1: Random and STR Rules

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Comparison of Priority Rules

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Scheduling n Jobs on Two Machines
 Two or more jobs must be processed on two
machines in a common sequence.
 Wish to minimize the flow time from the beginning
of the first job to the finish of the last job.
 Use Johnson’s rule.

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Steps to Johnson’s Rule
1. List the operation time for each job.
2. Select the shortest operation time.
3. If the shortest time is on the first machine, do first.
 If the shortest time is on the second machine, do the
job last.
 For ties, do first.
4. Repeat steps 2-3 for each remaining job.

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Example 22.2: n Jobs on Two Machines

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Example 22.2: Scheduling Jobs

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Example 22.2: Optimal Schedule of
Jobs Using Johnson’s Rule

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Scheduling a Set Number of Jobs on
the Same Number of Machines
 Some work centers have enough machines to start all the
jobs.
 Here the issue is the particular assignment of individual
jobs to individual machines.
 Assignment method: a special case of the transportation
method of linear programming.
1. There are n things to be distributed to n destinations.
2. Each thing assigned to one and only one destination.
3. Only one criterion can be used.

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Example 22.3: Assignment Method

Assignment Matrix Showing Machine Processing Costs for Each Job

22-25
Example 22.3: Step 1– Row Reduction

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Example 22.3: Step 2 – Column
Reduction

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Example 22.3: Step 3 – Apply Line
Test

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Example 22.3: Step 4 – Additional
Reduction

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Example 22.3: Optimal Solution

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Example 22.3: Optimal Assignment
and Their Costs
Job I to Machine E $3

Job II to Machine B 4

Job III to Machine C 2

Job IV to Machine D 5

Job V to Machine A 3

Total Cost $17

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Shop-Floor Control: Major Functions
1. Assigning priority of each shop order
2. Maintaining WIP quantity information
3. Conveying shop-order status information to the
office
4. Providing actual output data for capacity control
purposes
5. Providing quantity by location by shop order for
WIP inventory and accounting
6. Providing measurement of efficiency, utilization,
and productivity

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Gantt Chart

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Tools of Shop-Floor Control
1. The daily dispatch list
2. Various status and exception reports
a. Anticipated delay report
b. Scrap report
c. Rework report
d. Performance summary reports
e. Shortage list
3. An input/output control report

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Some Basic Tools of Shop-Floor Control

22-35
Shop Capacity Control Load Flow

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Principles of Work Center Scheduling
1. There is a direct equivalence between work flow and cash
flow.
2. The effectiveness of any job shop should be measured by
speed of flow through the shop.
3. Schedule jobs as a string, with process steps back-to-back.
4. A job once started should not be interrupted.
5. Speed of flow is most efficiently achieved by focusing on
bottleneck work centers and jobs.

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Principles of Job Shop Scheduling
(continued)
6. Reschedule every day.
7. Obtain feedback each day on jobs that are not completed
at each work center.
8. Match work center input information to what the worker
can actually do.
9. When improving output, look for incompatibility between
engineering design and process execution.
10. Certainty of standards, routings, and so forth is not
possible, but always work toward achieving it.

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Personnel Scheduling in Services
 Scheduling consecutive days off
 Scheduling daily work times
 Scheduling hourly work times

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Software for Employee Scheduling
 ScheduleSource Inc. of Broomfield, Colorado, offers an integrated
suite of tools for workforce management named TeamWork.
 At the heart of TeamWork is a customizable and automated
employee scheduling system. The benefits of TeamWork software
include features such as
 Web based
 Optimized schedules
 Zero conflict scheduling
 Time and attendance recordkeeping
 E-mail notifications
 Audit trail
 Advanced reporting
 Accessibility from anywhere any time

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Steps for the Software
 Step 1: Define labor requirements.
 Step 2: Establish employee availability.
 Step 3: Assign employees to particular skill sets and
rank an employee’s skill set level from 1 to 10 (1
being novice, 5 being average, and 10 being
superlative).
 Step 4: The TeamWork software automatically
builds a schedule.

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TSA and ScheduleSource Software
 ScheduleSource customers include
 The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has
successfully implemented ScheduleSource Software to
generate schedules for more than 44,000 federal
airport security personnel at 429 airports.
 More than 30,000,000 individual shifts were scheduled
in the airport security deployment.

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