CHAPTER 10: SCHEDULING

The strategic importance of scheduling is clear:

1. Effective scheduling means faster movement of goods and services through a
facility.
2. Added capacity, faster throughput, and the related flexibility mean better
customer service through faster delivery.
3. Good scheduling also contributes to realistic commitments and hence dependable
delivery.

SCHEDULING ISSUES
Scheduling deals with the timing of operations. Scheduling provides a basis for
assigning jobs to work centers. Schedule decisions begin with capacity planning,
which involves total facility and equipment resources available. Capacity plans are
usually annual or quarterly as new equipment and facilities are purchased or discarded.
Aggregate planning, makes decisions regarding the use of facilities, inventory,
people, and outside contractors. Aggregate plans are typically monthly, and resources
are terms of an aggregate measure such as total points, tons, or shop hours.
However, the master schedule breaks down the aggregate plan and develops a
schedule for specific products or product lines for each week. Short-term schedules
then translate capacity decisions, aggregate (intermediate) planning, and master
schedules into job sequences and specific assignments of personnel, materials and
machinery.
The scheduling task is one of allocating and prioritizing demand (generated by
either forecasts or customer orders) to available facilities. Two significant factors in
achieving this allocation and prioritizing are (1) type of scheduling, forward or
backward, and (2) the criteria for priorities.

Type of Scheduling
1. Forward scheduling. A schedule that begins as soon as the requirements are
known.
2. Backward scheduling. Scheduling that begins with the due date and schedules
the final operation first and the other job steps in reverse order.

Scheduling Criteria
1. Minimize completion time
2. Maximize utilization
3. Minimize work-in-process (WIP) inventory
4. Minimize customer waiting time
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SCHEDULING PROCESS-FOCUSED FACILITIES

Process-focused facilities (also known as intermittent or job-shop
facilities) are high variety, low-volume systems commonly found in manufacturing and
service organizations. These are production systems in which products are made to
order. Items made under this system usually differ considerably in terms of materials
used, order of processing, processing requirements, time of processing, and setup
requirements. Because of these differences, scheduling can be complex. To run a
facility in a balanced and efficient manner, the manager needs a production planning
and control system.

Whether the scheduling system is manual or automated, it must be accurate and

relevant. This means it requires a production database with both planning and control
files. Three types of planning files are:
1. Item master file – contains information about each component the firm
produces or purchases.
2. Routing file – indicates each component’s flow through the shop.
3. Work-center master file – contains information about the work center, such
as capacity and efficiency.

 Control files – files that track each work order’s actual progress against the
plan.

LOADING JOBS
Loading means the assignment of jobs to work or processing centers.
Operations managers assign jobs to work centers so that costs, idle time, or completion
times are kept to a minimum. Loading work centers takes two forms. One is oriented to
capacity; the second is related to assigning specific jobs to work centers.
Loading is a capacity-control technique that highlights overloads and underloads;
loading from the perspective of capacity via a technique known as input-output control.

Input-output control – a system that allows operations personnel to manage facility

work flows by tracking or added to a work center and its work completed.

Two Approaches Used for Loading

1. Gannt charts – planning charts used to schedule resources and allocate time.
2. Assignment method - a special class of linear programming models that
involves assigning tasks or jobs to resources.
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SEQUENCING JOBS
Sequencing (also referred to as dispatching) specifies the order in which
jobs should be done at each center.

Priority Rules for Dispatching Jobs

1. First come, first served (FCFS) – the first job to arrive at a work center is
processed first.
2. Shortest processing time (SPT) – the shortest jobs are handled first and
completed.
3. Earliest due date (EDD) – the job with the earliest due date is selected first.
4. Longest processing time (LPT) – the longer, bigger jobs are often very
important and are selected first.

 Critical ratio – a sequencing rule that is an index number computed by dividing

the time remaining until due date by the work time remaining.

 Johnson’s rule – an approach that minimizes processing time for sequencing a

group of jobs through two work centers while minimizing total idle time in the
work centers.

FINITE CAPACITY SCHEDULING (FCS)

Computerized short-term scheduling that overcomes the disadvantage of rule-
based systems by providing the user with graphical interactive computing.

THEORY OF CONSTRAINTS (TOC)

That body of knowledge that deals with anything that limits an organization’s
ability to achieve its goals.
1. Bottleneck – an operation that limits output in the production sequence.
2. Drum, Buffer, Rope
 Drum is the beat of the system; it provides the schedule – the pace of
production.
 Buffer – is the resource, usually inventory, necessary to keep the constraints
operating at capacity.
 Rope – provides the synchronization necessary to pull the units through the
system; the rope can be thought of as Kanban signals.
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SCHEDULING REPETITIVE FACILITIES

 Level material use – the use of frequent, high-quality, small lot sizes that
contribute to just-in-time production

SCHEDULING SERVICES
Despite the complexity in service system scheduling, operations personnel must
match capacity with customer demand. In the service industry, scheduling customers is
demand management, and scheduling the workforce is capacity management.

 Cyclical scheduling – here the objective focuses on developing a schedule with

the minimum number of workers. In this case, each employee is assigned to a
shift and has time off.

Reference: An Introduction to Operations Management 8th Edition

By Jay Heizer and Barry Render