Pardon the Interruption The community of scheduling practitioners has spoken. And the message is loud and clear. Some activities that need to be worked into a schedule take longer than one work shift–hey might even take longer than a week! Thus, any scheduling software must be able to accommodate interruptions. For example: My printing presses shut down at 5:30 each day and then resume operations at 7:30 the next morning. My staff works a normal day shift with weekends and holidays, but their typical work assignments usually take more than eight hours to perform. We use idle times between orders to make[...]
Most operations have down times that are standard. Examples are overnights, weekends, and holidays. The functions of the organization are on hold during those times, so a schedule should not place any activities on the timeline during those intervals. However, some activities can be interrupted temporarily and resumed when the down times are over. Others cannot. For example, you can start digging a hole on one day and finish it the next, but you may not be able to start pouring concrete and stop in the middle of the activity expecting to resume the next day. The same with baking[...]
The Best of Both Worlds It’s the age-old question: Which is better, man or machine? When it comes to scheduling, the answer is both! A few years ago, a research group looked at problems that could best be solved by combining tasks between people and machines. It turns out that people are very good at scheduling small problems because they can keep track of soft constraints like: Sally and Joe work especially well together. Room 7 is best used in the morning because the sun in there blinds people in the afternoon. It’s difficult, but not impossible to get a[...]
Supply Chain Uncertainties; Minimizing the Impact on Operations Even the best managed supply chains have uncertainties. Suppliers are producers themselves and their operations have unexpected interruptions. No one’s promise dates are achieved with 100% certainty. So your “Just-In-Time” operation is sometimes Not-In-Time. To minimize the impact of these supply chain uncertainties, most producers create buffer inventories of supplies. But the bigger the buffers, the higher the costs and, of course, these buffer inventories defeat the whole idea of Just-in-time production. There are other ways to reduce the impacts of the Supply Chain uncertainties. Suppose our operations management approach is designed[...]
5, 10, 15, … 50% Savings by the Fives! If these percentages were the savings you made in operating expenses, good things would be happening in your career. More surgeries with the same number of operating rooms More service calls with the same number of technicians and vehicles More billable time for your key personnel More revenue events in your event center Fewer classrooms required for the course offerings each semester These are a few examples of why the Fortune 500 companies and other organizations have embraced finite capacity scheduling and resource management. Efficiency and productivity improvements in the 5-15%[...]
Time is a Continuum Does your scheduling software know that? Image courtesy of Keerati at FreeDigitalPhotos.net “We may be going to hell in a bucket, babe, but at least we’re enjoying the ride.” –The Grateful Dead In reality, using the “bucket” approach for scheduling is neither enjoyable nor effective. Chopping time up into segments–often called buckets–leads to scheduling and resource management that is inherently inefficient. We have all seen calendars that segment time into daily buckets, spreadsheets in which columns are one-hour buckets, or white boards with rows or columns that represent some preset time buckets. There is a better[...]
Are You Doing It Wrong? How scheduling your resources is setting you up for failure. It’s Monday! The weekend was great and you’re well-rested. You’ve got your coffee in-hand and feeling confident. This week/quarter/month of scheduling will be easier. I’m here to tell you that it won’t. (Cue the collective sigh.) I hear it all the time. “I have to schedule the machines.” “My job is to maintain the schedule for the Doctors.” “We need to figure out what the meeting rooms are going to be used for.” These statements tell me that the focus of your scheduling operation is[...]
Example-Starter Dataset is available for new users When you sign up as a trial user or a new subscriber, we now furnish a set of activities and resources that you can use as templates for creating your own data. Eight different generic activities illustrate different activity descriptions that are available using the FAST scheduler. By reviewing these, new users can find an examples of the kinds of activities they want to schedule. Then by copying and editing the appropriate examples, users can quickly create their own data relevant to their environment. Similarly, we provide four different types of resource descriptions.[...]
New to the FAST scheduler Recently, a major field service support company, a food products manufacturer, an event planner, and a facilities manager have recognized the potential of using the FAST scheduler. The diversity of this group demonstrates the versatility and flexibility of the system. We think FAST is appropriate for time-oriented planning just as the spread sheet is appropriate for financial analysis. Both are generic, powerful and especially useful for the jobs they were intended. But, you wouldn’t use a scheduler to do financial analysis and you shouldn’t use a spread sheet to do scheduling. If rows or columns[...]
Handling Large Data Sets When you schedule activities using the FAST system, the Activity IDs are moved from the “Not Scheduled List” to the “Scheduled List”. When doing this, the system updates all resources assignments and remaining availabilities. Unscheduling reverses this process. If you have a large number of activities, these two lists can become long. To facilitate managing these lists, the system has several helpful features. First, activities are uniquely identified by a pair of descriptors; one is the activity ID and the other is a special tag called the “Name Tag”. An example is the best way to see the purpose of these[...]