Is the purpose of production scheduling to feed MRP and execution?
If you’re satisfied with this answer, then you’re missing something. A small, two-letter word will change the way you look at scheduling.
We build planning and scheduling systems in Excel.
Some systems like this material planning example have more than one user, in different locations.
Here is a way to share Excel data across multiple users by using a simple cloud service.
The biggest headache in material planning is long lead-time materials.
Here is a simple tool that gives visibility between a buyer and a factory separated by a lot of water.
Also see an easy trick to connect multiple Excel users on different continents with free data integration over the cloud.
Job shop production is a challenge for scheduling.
Three ideas to job shop scheduling and other customized products when you have no standard process data.
I would like to introduce the most useful function that Excel has to offer.
This is the most widely used Excel function in the Fast Excel Method. When building planning systems, I find myself typing this in formulas more than any other function.
The function can transform Excel spreadsheets into a fully-blown business software platform. We use it to retrieve data, perform calculations and present them in a report.
Represent your manufacturing business using master data. Link the planning and scheduling system to the real world.
Excel-based planning systems give you more flexibility. Flexibility within the realms of the possible. Here are the essentials of master data and how they map onto your business.
ERP often fails to give you the flexibility and visibility that you need.
Excel use has its own problems with spreadmarts and spreadsheet sin.
Apply this technique and take control over your planning and reporting. Getting Excel to perform like a business system.
The most common mistake that planners make with capacity planning, and how to fix it.
Some tips on how to get good visibility on capacity in a high-mix production factory.
Download our free Capacity Planning Tool and load it with your own production data.
Predictive planning provides a way to manage uncertainty. Planning can resolve the dilemma between schedule-push and demand-pull.
How an Excel-based predictive planning tool can work alongside the business transaction system.
Here is a Capacity Planning Tool to download, test and run with your own data.
You can see your work orders from sales, compare with available capacity. Gives you instant visibility on production capability and constraints.
This is a guide to help you use calendars in planning and scheduling.
Production capacity starts with calendars – here’s how to make a calendar and calculate in Excel.
Capacity planning compares minutes of production with days of resources. Here is an easy way to convert minutes to days over any working calendar.
This technique also helps to simplify many Excel date calculations for working days and times.
“It was easy to see where they were going wrong…”
A short story and a simple truth about capacity planning.
Also a chance to give us feedback and get free access to the right capacity planning tool for your business.
Happy new year! A time for planning and new year resolutions.
Ouch. The word “Resolutions” doesn’t give you good feelings, does it?
I prefer habits -form them and it takes effort to break them. Here are seven good habits for using Excel for planning.
Analytics for demand planning in Excel usually involves big tables of data.
To understand the demand for a product, you need to look into its history. An order history can easily have 100K+ records.
Here is a technique to perform fast analytical formulas on many thousand rows.
The dilemma of demand planning: to use a forecast or history.
We cannot expect history to repeat itself, yet every day we are reminded of inaccuracy and bias in the forecast.
How to combine the forecast and history to get a true measure of demand.
If you do not know your supply constraints, then it is likely your constraint is the MRP system.
How to use constraints-based planning and overcome the limitations of MRP logic.
Excel is the most widely used software for production planning. Production planning is one of the most common applications for Excel in manufacturing. Yet, there is one common mistake that people make when production planning in Excel. Avoid doing this one thing and you will save yourself hundreds of hours of unnecessary and repetitive work with production planning data. The mistake:..
I have demand, on-hand inventory and open purchase orders. What orders can I cover with materials and which orders are going to be short? This is a simple question in material planning. We frequently get asked by clients to build spreadsheet tools that can provide an answer. You can download
Today, manufacturing excellence is built on execution. Lean manufacturing places emphasis on daily execution to customer demand. It favours a system of visual signals on the factory floor to replace computer planning and paper reports. Does this mean that production scheduling is in conflict with best practices of lean and demand-driven production? Certainly not. Scheduling goes far beyond Master Production Scheduling, is an essential part of integrated planning and a powerful way to model real-world constraints in a supply chain.