CHAPTER 22: WORK CENTER

SCHEDULING
LO22-1: Explain work center scheduling.
LO22-2: Analyze scheduling problems using priority rules and
more specialized techniques.
LO22-3: Apply scheduling techniques to the manufacturing
shop floor.
LO22-4: Analyze employee schedules in the service sector.

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Workcenter Scheduling
• Manufacturing execution system (MES): an information
system that schedules, dispatches, tracks, monitors, and
controls production
• Real-time linkage to:
• MRP
• Product and process planning
• Systems that extend beyond the factory

• Service execution system (SES): an information system

that links schedules, dispatches, tracks, monitors, and
controls the customer’s encounters with the service
organization

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The Nature and Importance of
Work Centers
• Work center: an area in which production resources are
organized and work is completed
• May be a single machine, a group of machines, or an area where
work is done
• Can be organized according to function, product in a flow, or group
technology
• Jobs need to be routed between functionally organized
work centers to complete the work

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Loading
• Infinite loading: work is assigned to a work center based
on what is needed
• No consideration to capacity
• MRP is one example
• Finite loading: schedules each resource using the setup
and run time required for each order
• Determines exactly what will be done by each resource at every
moment during the day

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Scheduling
• Forward scheduling: the system takes an order and
schedules each operation that must be completed forward
in time
• Can tell the earliest date an order can be completed
• Backward scheduling: starts with due date and
schedules the required operations in reverse sequence
• Can tell when an order must be started in order to be done by a
specific date

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Limitations
• Machine-limited process: equipment is the critical
resource that is scheduled
• Labor-limited process: people are the key resource that
is scheduled
• Most actual processes are either labor limited or machine
limited but not both

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 Types of Manufacturing Processes and
Scheduling Approaches

Exhibit 22.1 Copyright ©2017 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. 22-7
Typical Scheduling and Control Functions
1. Allocating orders, equipment, and personnel
2. Determining the sequence of order performance
3. Initiating performance of the scheduled work
• Commonly called dispatching
4. Shop-floor control

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Objectives of Work-Center Scheduling
1. Meet due dates
2. Minimize lead time
3. Minimize setup time or cost
4. Minimize work-in-process inventory
5. Maximize machine utilization

• It is unlikely, and often undesirable, to simultaneously

satisfy all of these objectives

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Job Sequencing
• Sequencing: the process of determining the job order on
machines or work centers
• Also known as priority sequencing
• Priority rules: the rules used in obtaining a job sequence
• Can be simple or complex
• Can use one or more pieces of information
• Common rules shown on next slide

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 Priority Rules for Job Sequencing

Exhibit 22.3 Copyright ©2017 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. 22-11
Standard Measures of Schedule
Performance
1. Meeting due dates
2. Minimizing the flow time
3. Minimizing work-in-process inventory
4. Minimizing idle time

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Example 22.1: n Jobs on One Machine

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Example 22.1: FCFS Rule

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Example 22.1: SOT Rule

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Example 22.1: EDD

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Example 22.1: LCFS Schedule

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Example 22.1: Random Schedule

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Example 22.1: STR Rule

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Comparison of Priority Rules

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Scheduling n Jobs on Two Machines
• Two or more jobs must be processed on two machines in
a common sequence
• Wish to minimize the flow time from the beginning of the
first job to the finish of the last job
• Use Johnson’s rule
1. List the operation time for each job
2. Select the shortest operation time
3. If the shortest time is on the first machine, do first
• If the shortest time is on the second machine, do the job last
• For ties, do first
4. Repeat steps 2-3 for each remaining job

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Example 22.2: n Jobs on Two Machines

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 Example 22.2: Optimal Schedule of Jobs
Using Johnson’s Rule

Exhibit 22.4 Copyright ©2017 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. 22-23
Scheduling a Set Number of Jobs on the
Same Number of Machines
• Some work centers have enough machines to start all the
jobs
• Here the issue is the particular assignment of individual
jobs to individual machines
• Assignment method: a special case of the transportation
method of linear programming
1. There are n things to be distributed to n destinations
2. Each thing assigned to one and only one destination
3. Only one criterion can be used

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 Example 22.3: Assignment Method

Exhibit 22.5 Copyright ©2017 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. 22-25
Example 22.3: Step 1– Row Reduction

The smallest
number
is subtracted
from each row

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Example 22.3: Step 2 – Column
Reduction
The smallest
number is
subtracted from
each column

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Example 22.3: Step 3 – Apply Line Test

The number of
lines to cover all
zeros is 4;
because 5 are
required, go to
step 4

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Example 22.3: Step 4 – Additional
Reduction
• Subtract smallest
uncovered
number and add
to intersection of
lines
• Using lines drawn
in Step 3, smallest
uncovered
number is 1

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Example 22.3: Optimal Solution

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Scheduling n Jobs on m Machines
• Assume there are n jobs to be processed on m machines
and all jobs are processed on all machines
• There are (n!)m alternative schedules for this job set
• Because of the large number of schedules that exist for
even small workcenters, computer simulation is the only
practical way to determine the relative merits of different
priority rules

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Which Priority Rule Should Be Used?
1. It should be dynamic, that is, computed frequently
during a job to reflect changing conditions
2. It should be based in one way or another on slack

• Current approaches used by companies combine

simulation with human schedulers to create schedules

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Shop-Floor Control
1. Assigning priority of each shop order
2. Maintaining WIP quantity information
3. Conveying shop-order status information to the office
4. Providing actual output data for capacity control
purposes
5. Providing quantity by location by shop order for WIP
inventory and accounting
6. Providing measurement of efficiency, utilization, and
productivity

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 Gantt Chart

Exhibit 22.7 Copyright ©2017 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. 22-34
Tools of Shop-Floor Control
1. The daily dispatch list
2. Various status and exception reports
a. Anticipated delay report
b. Scrap report
c. Rework report
d. Performance summary reports
e. Shortage list
3. An input/output control report

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 Some Basic Tools of Shop-Floor Control

Exhibit 22.8 Copyright ©2017 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. 22-36
Input/Output Control
• The major precept of input/output control is that the
planned work input to a workcenter should never exceed
the planned work output
• When the input exceeds the output, backlogs build up at
the workcenter
• Increases the lead time estimates for jobs upstream
• Congestion occurs
• Processing becomes inefficient
• Flow of work to downstream workcenters becomes sporadic

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 Shop Capacity Control Load Flow

Exhibit 22.9 Copyright ©2017 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. 22-38
Principles of Work Center Scheduling
1. There is a direct equivalence between work flow and
cash flow
2. The effectiveness of any job shop should be measured
by speed of flow through the shop
3. Schedule jobs as a string, with process steps back-to-
back
4. A job once started should not be interrupted
5. Speed of flow is most efficiently achieved by focusing
on bottleneck work centers and jobs

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Principles of Job Shop Scheduling Continued
6. Reschedule every day
7. Obtain feedback each day on jobs that are not
completed at each work center
8. Match work center input information to what the worker
can actually do
9. When improving output, look for incompatibility between
engineering design and process execution
10. Certainty of standards, routings, and so forth is not
possible, but always work toward achieving it

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Personnel Scheduling in Services
• Scheduling consecutive days off
• Scheduling daily work times
• Scheduling hourly work times

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Software for Employee Scheduling
• ScheduleSource Inc. of Broomfield, Colorado, offers an
integrated suite of tools for workforce management named
TeamWork
• At the heart of TeamWork is a customizable and automated
employee scheduling system
• The benefits of TeamWork software include features such as
• Web based
• Optimized schedules
• Zero conflict scheduling
• Time and attendance recordkeeping
• E-mail notifications
• Audit trail
• Advanced reporting
• Accessibility from anywhere any time

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Steps for the Software
• Step 1: Define labor requirements
• Step 2: Establish employee availability
• Step 3: Assign employees to particular skill sets and rank
an employee’s skill set level from 1 to 10
• 1 being novice, 5 being average, and 10 being superlative
• Step 4: The TeamWork software automatically builds a
schedule

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Scheduling Hourly Work Times
• Services such as restaurants face changing requirements from
hour to hour
• More workers are needed for peak hours, and fewer are needed in
between
• More workers are needed for peak hours, and fewer are
needed in between
• This kind of personnel scheduling situation can be approached
by applying a simple rule, the “first-hour” principle
• For the first hour, we assign a number of workers equal to the
requirement in that period
• For each subsequent period, assign the exact number of additional
workers to meet the requirements
• When one or more workers come to the end of their shifts, add more
workers only if needed to meet the requirement
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First-Hour Example

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Summary
• A schedule is a timetable for performing work that indicates
how resources are to be used over time
• This process involves (1) allocating jobs to resources, (2) sequencing
the jobs at each resource, (3) releasing (dispatching) the jobs, and (4)
monitoring the status of the jobs
• One characteristic of a scheduling system is whether capacity
is directly considered or not
• Priority rules are used when there are a number of jobs that
need to be run on a single machine
• The job of actually managing work in a manufacturing
environment is called shop-floor or production activity control
• Service sector scheduling focuses on setting detailed
personnel schedules

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Practice Exam
1. This is the currently used term for a system that schedules,
dispatches, tracks, monitors, and controls production
2. This is when work is assigned to workcenters based simply
on when it is needed. Resources required to complete the
work are not considered
3. This is when detailed schedules are constructed that
consider the setup and run times required for each order
4. This is when work is scheduled from a point in time and out
into the future, in essence telling the earliest the work can be
completed
5. This is when work is scheduled in reverse from a future due
date, to tell the time original work must be started

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Practice Exam Continued
6. If we were to coin the phrase “dual constrained” relative to the
resources being scheduled, we would probably be referring to what
two resources
7. For a single machine scheduling problem, what priority rule
guarantees that the average (mean) flow time is minimized
8. Consider the following three jobs that need to be run on two
machines in sequence: A(3 1), B(2 2), and C(1 3), where the run
times on the first and second machine are given in parenthesis
• In what order should the jobs be run to minimize the total time to complete all
three jobs
9. According to APICS, this is a system for utilizing data from the shop
as well as data processing files to maintain and communicate
status information on shop orders and workcenters
10. A resource that limits the output of a process by limiting capacity is
called this

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