• No factory is perfect, and a schedule can become invalid at any time because of,
- Try to find alternative production plans/parts
• Instead of scheduling before production (MRP and Capacity planning), a manufacturer may opt to do scheduling on the fly.
• Some of these methods include,
- Earliest operation due date - soonest date. This gives time until due, but ignores processing time.
- Order Slack - soonest date minus processing time. This gives the amount of time to play with.
- Shortest operation first - Do the quickest jobs first. This just clears out WIP faster.
• It is important to know what is happening on the factory floor.
• To do this we must pay attention to obvious problems like machine operation, and hidden problems such as quality, and production quantities.
• Inspection covers a number of areas,
- Inspection of manufactured product