Production Lines

Production lines are scheduled in a manner that spreads the flow schedules with completion date within the same scheduling bucket. Items with given attribute values are distributed evenly across the production lines, based on the flow schedule volume for those attributes.

The spread is based on item attribution from item extensible flexfields that are defined in Production Scheduling Organizations. To spread by item name, populate Item Extensible Flexfield with the name of the item and treat that like any other custom attribute.

Completed flow schedules within the schedule horizon are considered during the schedule calculation to avoid overstating the capacity. This is relevant in the scenarios when a schedule is refreshed sometime during the day and after several flow schedules might have already come off the line and were completed earlier that same day. Completed flow schedules aren't visualized in the Flow Schedules table and Gantt chart and they're solely considered during the schedule calculation.

Availability of required materials and components is checked at the beginning of a scheduling bucket. If not all required materials and components are available for a flow schedule, then it's moved into the next scheduling bucket and sequenced with the flow schedules allocated into that bucket.

Flow sequencing rules are evaluated across scheduling bucket boundaries, with one exception. The Must be First rule is evaluated first and separately within each scheduling bucket. When a flow schedule is placed first in a bucket by this rule, all other sequencing rules, except the K of N rules, are evaluated only within that bucket. This approach prevents conflicts where the Must be First rule could restrict the application of other rules across buckets, such as the Minimum Run rule.

As it isn't always possible to respect all sequencing rules, any rule violations are logged in the respective scheduled processes log file for the Run Scheduling Solve process.

Note that a work order header attribute isn’t considered for flow sequencing, if two or more work orders, which produce the same item, have different attribute values for that attribute. Any flow sequencing rule that uses this specific work order header attribute is ignored. Sequencing rules for different attributes that apply to these work orders are still considered. Such circumstance might arise, if an attribute is item-independent, for example, corresponds to a customer categorization or demand classification. The attribute is displayed in the schedule views to support schedule analysis and drive potential manual resequencing by the user.

Define a production line

To define a production line:

1. On the Production Schedules page, click Manage Scheduling Organizations.
2. Select an organization.
3. Select the Actions icon.
4. Select the Production Lines option.
5. On the Production Lines page, click Add.
6. Select the production line.
7. Select a scheduling strategy:
   • If you select Rule-based sequence, the solve action spreads the flow schedules within a scheduling bucket based on item attributes. It ensures that appearance ratios and run sizes align with the volume of flow schedules with specific attribute values, relative to the total volume in the bucket. Any defined attribute-specific sequencing rules are considered as well.
   • If you select Attribute sequence, the solver considers the specified attribute and attribute value sequences, but not the flow sequencing rules.