What is production scheduling? How to easily schedule production

What is production scheduling?

Production scheduling includes all activities of coordination and allocation of tasks to departments and individuals following the right order. This ensures that the project is completed according to the production planning and the existing capacity of the factory. In addition, production scheduling helps determine the quantity and time to complete each detail, part, and product in the proposed project.

To schedule production, three inputs need to be considered:

• Beginning inventory
• Upcoming demand forecasts
• Ordering quantity

From there, the output of the above output scheduling will produce the following:

• Build-to-stock: Build-to-stock = {Beginning inventory - max (Orders, Forecasts)}.
• Production volume and time: Determined based on the build-to-stock plan. Any needed stock for the order when goes into shortage will be put into production for replacement.
• Ready-to-sell stock: This is the remaining stock after deducting all the orders from that week to the week of the start of production (first week). This is also the production quantity for the week minus all orders from that week to the next week (production weeks).
  

Production scheduling is a crucial step in the production process

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The goal of production scheduling

Assignees schedule production based on existing data and information of the company. After that, managers can determine when to produce and how much to produce. This helps to prepare production resources in time and ensure available stock for sale on demand. Production process scheduling follows these objectives:

• Set a proper time to ensure the manufacturing implementation.
• Optimize the time to produce each order.
• Minimize the number of unfinished goods in the production process.
• Improve the efficiency of the production resources using.

The production schedule supports many important goals

The role of production scheduling

When implementing production schedule planning, the assignee must balance the plan and the reality of all elements of the project. For instance, the operating capacity of the manufacturing system, machinery, equipment, technology lines, human resources, etc. The specific task of planning the production schedule is:

• Make quick production decisions.
• Identify and organize the order of tasks.
• Organize activities and implement plans following set schedules.
• Control the production line situation and work completion progress.
• Implement and expedite the execution of late alarm orders.
  
  

Specific tasks of the production schedule

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How to schedule production

Knowing about production scheduling and wonder methods for building a complete production schedule and plan for your project? Viindoo will answer doubts about ways to schedule production.

Step 1: Make a to-do list for the day, week, month, and year

This is the first and decisive step of production planning. This gives an overview of the quantity, order, and timing of tasks. In addition, the process of scheduling the tasks should go with a full and clear record for easy and proactive implementation.

Step 2: Provide corresponding operational goals

Once there is a to-do list, set goals for those tasks. The goal can be the time to achieve the desired result. It is crucial that the goal must be closely aligned with the requirements and capabilities of the company.

Step 3: Prioritize the tasks in a reasonable order

Arranging the tasks listed above in the appropriate order is important. The priority can be in terms of urgency, importance, time, or carried subject. This arrangement eliminates unnecessary work, saving more time and resources for the company.

Step 4: Implement flexibly the proposed plan

In this step, it is necessary to appropriately arrange the priority and important tasks. This eases the implementation of the original plan, avoiding difficulties and problems in the production process.

Step 5: Check the results of the work

This step is about regularly monitoring, checking, and comparing goals and achieved results. This supports promptly completing the unfinished work and tracking the production progress. Therefore, estimating the completion level of the project is convenient.

How to schedule production for a project

Example of production scheduling

Here is an example of scheduling production for your reference.

Example: Company that manufactures product A has a beginning inventory of 64 units. The demand forecast volume in January is 120 products and in February is 160 products (the number of products is evenly distributed over the weeks). The number of orders for the weeks is shown as follows: week 1: 33 products, week 2: 20 products, week 3: 10 products, week 4: 4 products, and week 5: 2 products.

Each production series produces 70 products. How does the business schedule for a 2-month production and determine the amount of build-to-stock and ready-to-sell stock for each week?

• Build-to-stock
  

• Ready-to-sell stock
  

Make production scheduling simple with Viindoo Manufacturing Software

Viindoo Manufacturing software is a manufacturing management system to improve productivity as well as business efficiency. The software supports the synthesis of statistics and analysis of the operational efficiency of the production process. This helps bring profits to businesses and helps monitor along with optimizing the production process of the project. Some of the outstanding advantages of the software are:

• Allow expansion and integration with peripheral devices in smart businesses and factories.
• Schedule production automatedly and support for monitoring detailed management activities with a Gantt chart.
• Assist in inventory planning and allow integration with operational supply chains to help optimize inventory planning.
• Provide an intuitive, multi-dimensional, and flexible reporting system. This helps aggregate fully and timely all information about the production situation of the business.
• Allow use on all devices such as phones, personal computers, tablets, etc.
• Integrate with other Viindoo value-added software such as Maintenance, Purchase, Inventory, Accounting, etc.

Viindoo Manufacturing Software

Businesses will experience modern software integrated with various supportive utilities provided by Viindoo. Viindoo supports:

• Summarize all business stages and connect departments with a single modular structure system.
• Go digital for building and managing every process of a Manufacturing Business.
• Meet all business needs from basic to specialized.
• Allow expanding and unlimited integration to meet the operational needs of the business. In fact, this is a cross-platform software, operating on websites, apps, etc. to help businesses easily manage and use.