Why You Use Production Scheduling

Before answering the question, let's recap what we know about the manufacturing process. Your manufacturing application calculates start times and end times based on the work order start or completion date. The application accounts for the duration of resource usage, but it assumes that your resources have unlimited capacity; it then potentially plans to execute production for multiple work orders simultaneously.

Why Resource Constraints Must Be Considered

Let's say your shop floor has just two machines that can be used for 10 hours a day, due to defined resource or shift exceptions. You need to make 10 items by the end of today and each item takes two hours to make. This means that by your deadline, you can make just half the required number of items because of capacity constraints on your resources. Because your shop floor might be executing more than one work order at a time, daily constraints on resource capacity must considered.

How Production Scheduling Helps

Using Oracle Production Scheduling, you can consider resource capacity constraints and the changeovers on resources that occur throughout production. You can generate a feasible and executable schedule by considering resource capacity and resource availability, attribute-based changeover rules, component availability, and multistage dependencies based on work definitions and item structures. Using changeover rules you can reduce changeover times to increase throughput and reduce lateness of work orders.