Chapter – 4 Operations Planning and Control –

Operations Scheduling
Scheduling  Scheduling deals with the timing of operations 
It is establishing the timing of the use of equipment, facilities and human activities in an
organization.
Scheduling  It is the last stage of planning before production occurs 3 Capacity Planning (long
term; years) Changes in facilities Changes in equipment etc Aggregate Planning (intermediate
term; quarterly or monthly) Facility utilization Personnel changes Subcontracting etc Master
Schedule (intermediate term; weekly) Material Requirement Planning-MRP Disaggregating
aggregate plan Short term Scheduling (short term; days, hours, minutes) Work center loading Job
sequencing
Goals of Scheduling  Efficient utilization of  staf  equipment  facilities  Minimization of 
customer waiting time  inventories  processing time 4
5 Scheduling Operations  Companies difer based on product volume and product variety which
afects how companies organizes their operations  Each kind of company operation needs
diferent scheduling techniques  Scheduling has specific definitions for routing, bottleneck, due
date, slack and queue
Scheduling Definitions  Routing: The operations to be performed, their sequence, the work
centers, & the time standards  Bottleneck: A resource whose capacity is less than the demand
placed on it  Due date: When the job is supposed to be finished  Slack: The time that a job can
be delayed & still finish by its due date  Queue: A waiting line 6
Importance of Scheduling  Scheduling executes a company’s strategic business plan 
Scheduling afects functional areas  Accounting relies on schedule information and completion
of customer orders to develop revenue projections  Marketing uses schedule efectiveness
measurement to determine whether the company is using lead times for competitive advantage 
Operations uses the schedule to maintain its priorities and to provide customer service by
finishing jobs on time 7
Type of Scheduling  Forward scheduling  Scheduling ahead, from some point in time 
Forward scheduling starts as soon as the requirements are known or when a job is received 
Frequently results in buildup of work-in-process inventory  Backward scheduling  Scheduling
by working backwards from the due date  begin scheduling the job’s last activity so that the job
is finished on due date Due Due Date Now Now Due Due Date Date Now 8
Scheduling Operations Scheduling tasks are largely a function of the volume of system output
Diferent kinds of operations need diferent scheduling techniques  Scheduling in High-Volume
Operations  Scheduling in Intermediate-Volume Operations  Scheduling in Low-Volume
Operations 9
10 High-Volume Operations  Also known as flow operations (flow systems)  Scheduling
encompasses allocating workloads to specific work centers and determining the sequence in
which operations are to be performed  Characterized by standardized equipment and activities
that provide high-volume standard items  Designed for high efficiency and high utilization of
labor and equipment
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