Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk Scheduler Users Guide - Manual (Page 101)

7 • S CHEDULE A NALYSIS
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One might conclude that Case 8 provides the best results. It also yields one of the better
values for the latest end order. You might note that Case 6 also had only four late jobs and
about the same value for the latest end order time. Since this option requires one fewer
labor resource, you might want to consider it over Case 8. Of course, Cases 6, 7, and 8
assumed you could increase the labor pool. If this were not feasible, you would need to
consider the first five options.
The general objective of this exercise was to provide an example of how you can use the
various scheduling options to generate alternate schedules and compare them to a baseline
case. This type of analysis is rarely performed on a daily basis. Instead it would be
performed on a periodic basis, once every one or two months, to provide assurance that
you are currently using the best scheduling option. It was also the intent to illustrate that
there are occasions where you must dig deeper into the schedule performance in order to
determine which option is best.
Additional FactoryTalk Scheduler options
At any time during our scheduling analysis, we could have reset our base case. This does
not save the schedule; it only saves the summary statistics that are used for comparisons.
In our analysis, it would have been easy to recreate the schedule that we wanted because
we were removing all orders from the planning board and generating each new schedule
using the standard sequencing options. In a real-world application, it could be very
difficult to recreate the schedule that was used for the base case. It is most likely that you
would have significantly more resources and orders on the planning board. If you
artificially moved the current timeline before unallocating or used the drag-and-drop
features or any other methods that would require a specific set of actions to recreate the
schedule, you might want to save the base case before performing more analysis. You can
save this base case in the normal manner using the File > Save, File > Save As, or File >
Save All menu options. If you want to save the base case under a different name, there are
methods available to create backups of your database, but they are not part of the
FactoryTalk Scheduler software.
A normal application implementation would include the integration of FactoryTalk
Scheduler with other data sources; i.e., ERP system and shop-floor status system. Once
this integration has been completed, it provides the ability to update automatically the
shop and order status. It also provides the ability to add new products and routings.
Periodically, resources become unavailable for short periods of time. This unavailability
may be due to a breakdown, preventive maintenance, holidays, etc. If these occur on a
regularly scheduled basis, you might want to incorporate them into the shift patterns.
However, most of these events are largely unpredictable. Others, such as preventive
maintenance, are often scheduled to occur only after you know what work is scheduled for
an individual resource. We refer to these types of events as calendar exceptions. There are
two distinct types: individual and global. Examples of individual calendar exceptions