Scheduling jobs in manufacturing is one of the most complex tasks in operating a shop floor as it involves a range of various details that must be accounted for, such as work orders, raw material availability, due dates, employee skill sets, and work centre capacity.
If not done correctly, loading jobs into the schedule can result in costly mistakes that could affect productivity and profitability, or even compromise your relationship with a customer.
This is where innovative strategies, such as the use of enterprise resource planning (ERP), come into play and create a whole different narrative for manufacturers.
Adam Grabowski, director of marketing at Global Shop Solutions, has identified an array of benefits and ways in which ERP systems can help manufacturers accomplish on-time delivery at all times.
Operational data at your fingertips
In a white paper, Grabowski highlighted one of the biggest advantages of ERP scheduling— tracking jobs in real-time. With access to this data, manufacturers would be able to detect bottlenecks while jobs are in progress and ensure that they get completed on time.
Up until the digital age, manufacturing leaders have only relied on guesswork and estimations when considering the capacity of resources and people. This impacts the pace of the work meant to beat deadlines.
ERPs are designed to address this issue, automatically scheduling tasks in minutes, rather than hours, with maximum efficiency and full capacity utilisation. The system also tracks what you are making, how you are making it, the quantity, and the work in progress at any given moment.
Berlin Gardens, an indoor and outdoor furniture manufacturer, has succeeded in building strong relationships by providing short lead times and reliable due dates with the help of Global Shop Solutions’ Advanced Planning & Scheduling Module.
“We use the auto work order generation feature in our ERP system to schedule the start of all new jobs. This allows us to build to stock, but only what we need to ship, and plays a critical role in meeting our ambitious lead times and our customers’ requested due dates,” said Owen Yoder, information technology/systems manager at Berlin Gardens.
Why scheduling matters
ERPs leverage highly sophisticated algorithms that automatically design the most efficient work order, allowing scheduling to become a way of life rather than a hoped-for event. This ability to schedule quickly can also result in the lowering of the cost of setup, production, shipping, and more.
Outside the shop floor perspective, salespeople can also reap ERP benefits by basing sales decisions on reliable data on every job, from work order number to completion due date. With this data, planners will be able to perform forward and backward scheduling to see if jobs can be adjusted to accommodate a customer’s due date.
The uncertainty that comes with manual scheduling can create unnecessary stress. To learn more about the impact of scheduling on your business, visit globalshopsolutions.com.
