|
|
|
|
|
  
|
Product Brief SCHEDULING EXPERT
|
||
 Services
Papers:
|
SchedulingExpertTM is an innovative computer software for building production schedules for continuous manufacturing plants. SchedulingExpertTM generates an optimum sequence of jobs for the production lines while taking into account a number of resource and production constraints.
Objective (Why use SchedulingExpertTM) Scheduling of continuous manufacturing processes such as pulp production or steel production requires to account for different production constraints and customer requirements, while optimizing all resources. Traditional methods of scheduling and planning focus on the order fill dates, work-in-process inventories, allocation of labour, distribution within the supply chains, etc. They leave many important cost factors related to process management and optimization such as product grade switching, conflict between production lines, and maintenance scheduling, to the human scheduler. However, for a large number of different orders and production constraints, building optimal production schedules is difficult and seldom done optimally. As part of the REDUCT Process Intelligence software suite SchedulingExpertTM addresses the impact that production constraints and production schedules have on process optimization.
Functional Description SchedulingExpertTM integrates several scheduling functions including scheduling orders, production, maintenance, etc., into a single, integrated software. SchedulingExpertTM acts as an expert scheduler who generates accurate sequence of jobs for several production lines in a near real-time. It does this by analyzing customers’ orders and by weighing many different production constraints. Typical constraints included are marketing priorities and order delivery dates, optimal sequencing of product grades, interactions between several production lines, maintenance scheduling, etc. Users can define the impact of different constraints (e.g. hard and soft constraints), scheduling preferences (e.g. preferred type of schedules), while performing interactive schedules (what-if-schedules).
System Architecture SchedulingExpertTM employs Microsoft Foundation Classes technologies to provide robust, secure, and compatible integration with the existing systems application software. SchedulingExpertTM is a software solution for building optimized schedules while taking into account diverse production and resource constraints. The system supports:
SchedulingExpertTM is compatible with most ODBC enabled production order databases including Access. DBase, FoxPro, Ingress, MS for Oracle, etc.
Economics Use of process constraints in building optimized production schedules means lower product (grade) switching cost, less off-spec product, and better compliance with customers’ requirements. Use of ODBC compliant communication protocols means low integration costs with plant databases and high data transfer reliability. New applications can be efficiently developed by plant staff alone, or with the help of REDUCT’s training and support services.
|
||
|
|
REDUCT & Lobbe
Technologies Inc. P.O. Box 800, 186 - 8120 No.2 Road., Richmond, BC, Canada V7C 5J8 ph: (604) 275-3711 fax: (604) 275-3715 email: dispatch@reduct.com |
SchedulingExpert
