Efficient production scheduling is critical for manufacturing companies that want to meet customer demands, optimize resource usage, and maintain profitability. As businesses grow, it plays a crucial role in ensuring that production runs smoothly by coordinating the raw materials availability, workforce deployment, and machinery uptime through task and process sequences needed to manufacture products within a given timeframe.
What Is Production Scheduling?
Production scheduling is a process that helps organizations set the timing and sequencing of manufacturing tasks in a way that best helps them to meet production goals while maximizing efficiency. It involves a detailed plan that covers resource allocation and deadlines for each stage of the production process.
A production schedule supports manufacturers in meeting their goals on time, within budget, and with the desired quality of goods. This helps a business increase its productivity, reduce waste, maximize resources, and ultimately best meet the needs of its customers and its own organizational goals.
Key Takeaways
- Production scheduling is essential to optimizing resources and achieving business goals.
- There are five main stages of production scheduling — planning, routing, scheduling, dispatching, and execution — each of which plays an important role in operations.
- There are various production scheduling methods, and manufacturers can work with one or several of those methods to achieve business goals.
Production Scheduling Explained
Production scheduling is a schedule that helps organize production. But it might help to think of it first as a plan, even though production planning is distinct from production scheduling. The goal isn’t just to have a calendar-type schedule; instead, it’s to have a specific workflow for production that maximizes available resources and efficiency while meeting production goals.
Creating a master production schedule is usually the first step of the production scheduling process. This master schedule outlines overall goals and provides the baseline framework for individual tasks and how those should be timed and sequenced. It also accounts for business considerations such as customer demand, inventory levels, available supplies, production capacity, and costs.
From there, the master schedule can be broken down into more detailed production schedules that allow each department involved in the manufacturing process to understand what needs to happen for its goals to be met on time and on budget, and what resources they’ll need to make this happen.
But a good production schedule isn’t rigid. If something changes along the way — a surge or slash in demand, disruptions in the supply chain, a labor shortage — a production schedule should be able to be adjusted in a way that minimizes disruption to the overall manufacturing process.
Why Is Production Scheduling Important?
Without a production schedule, ensuring that production processes are completed efficiently on time is a struggle. That might work for low-stakes projects that are experimental or exploratory, but manufacturing requires enough overhead up front that the risk is too great to proceed without a production schedule.
Skip the production schedule, and you have no way to know whether you’re missing deadlines, misusing resources, spending more than you should on tools or labor, or manufacturing a product that’s subpar to what you could be crafting if you had a production schedule.
Benefits of Production Scheduling
Better resource management, heightened efficiency, greater assurance of meeting business goals — there are plenty of benefits to production scheduling. Here are five of the most important ones:
- Planning. Production scheduling falls under the broad umbrella of “planning,” so naturally it’s essential for planning the manufacturing process. It helps a business accurately forecast what needs to be manufactured and what materials and labor will be required, and it ensures that all tasks are in order. It also helps make sure that resources are being used in the way that makes the most sense, without waste and without shortages. Prioritization also benefits from production scheduling — when managers see the entire production schedule laid out, they will be better able to see whether the most urgent and important needs are getting the attention they need.
- Scheduling. In addition to the basics of scheduling — helping organizations develop timelines and set deadlines for the manufacturing process — production scheduling speaks to the underlying reasons organizations create those timelines. With a schedule, manufacturers are better able to allocate resources at the time they’re needed most. It also helps organizations, particularly those with complex production processes, coordinate internally and externally so that no team is left with a shortfall unexpectedly.
- Prevent stockouts. A production schedule can help keep an organization from facing stockouts. Stockouts are defined as running out of a particular item; in this context, an item needed for manufacturing. Stockouts can be costly for an organization — when it’s a stockout of a consumer-facing item, the sale is lost. But with a stockout of a material needed for manufacturing, the cost is that production could be held up. With a production schedule, manufacturers can glean insights from the planning and forecasting stage, which will help them understand how much inventory they need to have on hand to fulfill their goals. They’ll also be able to slate reordering and restocking, including “safety stock” to use as a buffer, which will help keep the production process rolling along without gaps. Production scheduling also usually allows for real-time monitoring of inventory, letting manufacturers spot potential stockouts before they happen and adjust accordingly.
- Improve efficiency. With production scheduling, a manufacturer knows what’s going to happen, what resources are needed to make it happen, and when it’s going to happen. Machinery, materials, labor — the use of all of these is maximized with a solid production schedule. There are hidden efficiencies too, such as minimizing setup and changeover time for equipment.
- Improve communication. Production scheduling helps put everyone on the same page. The entire team knows what’s expected of them, leading to better collaboration. The real-time monitoring supported by production scheduling helps leaders quickly spot any problems that may arise in the course of manufacturing, which can then be communicated efficiently to team members, including notification between team members themselves. And the transparency that production scheduling invites can leader to trust and stronger communication among all stakeholders.
Stages of Production Scheduling
Different organizations define the stages of production scheduling differently and may use different terminology than what’s below. But the essential actions are roughly the same across systems: planning, routing, scheduling, dispatching, and execution.
- Planning. As the first stage of the production scheduling process, planning includes forecasting demand, determining how best to use resources, understanding the capacity needed for demand to be met, budgeting, and assessing risk. As with production planning as a discipline, this stage is critical because it provides a foundation for all the work that’s to come.
- Routing. At the routing stage, organizations figure out how the product comes to be; in other words, what its route is. From design to the movement of materials to sale-ready product, the routing stage determines the sequence of events involved in manufacturing, with an eye toward efficiency and cutting out waste. Organizations may develop a routing sheet — a document that lists the sequence needed in manufacturing — that can be adapted as needed.
- Scheduling. Once the routing and sequence have been determined, manufacturers can start the actual scheduling part of the broader discipline of production scheduling. Start and end dates and times are set at this stage.
- Dispatching. Think of dispatching as the “get set” part of “ready, get set, go.” It’s when production orders are released to team members. At the dispatching stage, the work of the previous stages begins to come to fruition — the schedule begins to be implemented, people who are doing the work learn what’s required of them, and team members make sure that the necessary resources will be available once it’s time to actually begin production.
- Execution. It’s go time. At the execution stage, the actual production begins. The raw materials that have been assembled and planned for begin their journey through the route determined at the routing stage. Team members monitor the production process to make sure the production schedule is adhered to, ready to troubleshoot if needed. That includes quality control: If the finished product isn’t meeting expectation, team members may need to reevaluate the production process.
Production Scheduling Methods
There’s no shortage of established production scheduling methods, and there’s no one “best” route. The magic formula for one manufacturer might fall short for another, since the optimal solution will depend on the organization’s needs and competitive advantages, and the state of the market. And it’s not a one-and-done situation, either — many manufacturers cherry-pick from various production scheduling processes to ensure they meet their goals. Here are four of the most common production scheduling methods:
- Infinite. An infinite production schedule is one in which processes are scheduled indefinitely, with no specific end date and without being tethered to any specific demand. It assumes that there will be a steady supply of all resources needed to manufacture the product. This makes it practical for long-term planning of established products that have a stable demand. It’s also practical in helping manufacturers determine capacity; its stability can help teams forecast what would be needed to grow. But it’s not particularly flexible, so manufacturers often use infinite production scheduling in combination with a method that’s more responsive to immediate or short-term needs.
- Finite. In contrast to the infinite production scheduling method, a finite production scheduling method works with what’s actually available — the real-time materials, equipment, and labor needed to manufacture the product. This makes it useful when filling a specific or limited demand, and it shines when there are disruptions to the production process, because it’s built on what’s actually available at the moment. But that real-time quality is also what makes it challenging: A finite production schedule requires accurate, up-to-date, detailed information about all resources.
- Forward. A forward production schedule begins from the start date and works forward. The goal is to ensure that each routing step of the process happens as soon as possible based on resource availability. The date of the last steps of the process is determined by everything that comes before it. Forward scheduling is useful when customer demand is stable, but it has the potential to lead to a backlog if there is a delay or change in the process, because the end date is not the critical factor of a forward production schedule.
- Backward. A backward production schedule stems from the due date of the order and works backward to figure out when production needs to start. The date of the first steps of the process are determined by the end date. When the delivery date is the primary concern of a manufacturer, a backward production schedule may be a good fit, because it prioritizes spotting and squashing delays and bottlenecks to meet the critical end date. But a backward production schedule, as with a finite production schedule, requires accurate, real-time, detailed information about what’s happening in the production process. There’s also very little wiggle room in most backward production schedules.
How to Optimize Production Scheduling
If production scheduling is designed to optimize operations, it makes sense that you’d need to optimize your production scheduling. Here are a few guiding principles to make sure you’re doing so:
- Collaborate. Your suppliers and customers are the alpha and omega of your production scheduling. Communicating with them up front and in real time can help you identify issues before they become problems, reduce lead times, spark new ideas, and generate an ongoing path of communication that can help you stay flexible as your production scheduling unfolds.
- Use lean manufacturing principles. These principles are designed to cut waste, minimize costs, and improve efficiency and quality — the exact vision manufacturers have for their production scheduling.
- Try production scheduling software. By automating parts of the scheduling process and reducing the potential for human error, monitoring progress, and creating ready-to-go reports, production scheduling software can elevate your process and free up your talent to think big-picture.
- Keep an eye on the data. A good production schedule is one that keeps pace with your current needs, and data can reveal how those needs have changed before a narrative emerges. Regularly reviewing production data, such as downtime and cycle time, can help you sniff out inefficiencies. Production scheduling software (see above) can give you real-time visibility into your data.
Production Scheduling KPIs
Key performance indicators (KPIs) can help you figure out whether your production schedule is working and where it needs some attention. As with all KPIs, the ones you choose should be specific, measurable, and valuable in helping you achieve your goals. Here are seven frequently used KPIs:
- On-time delivery. The percentage of orders that are delivered by the date promised can be a clear indicator of whether the production schedule is working.
- Performance. Are the goods that you’re manufacturing living up to the promises you’ve made to your customers? If not, in what ways do they need to be improved? Measuring performance indicates whether you’re meeting broader business goals.
- Cycle time. How long does it take to manufacture your product from start to finish? If other key metrics are met, a shorter lead time can signal efficiency.
- Production efficiency. This is the ratio of actual output to expected output, and it can indicate whether an organization is meeting its goals.
- Capacity use. This KPI measures how much available capacity is being used in manufacturing. The higher the capacity use, the higher your efficiency.
- Downtime. This is a measure of the amount of time that process equipment or labor is not in use. Minimizing downtime reduces costs and bolsters efficiency.
- Waste. This KPI determines the waste created in your manufacturing process. A lower waste rate indicates an efficient production schedule and supports sustainability goals.
Key Factors to Consider in Production Scheduling
Most of the factors involves minimizing delays, optimizing utilization, and generally keeping operations consistent for resource availability and forecasting.
- Crew management. Manufacturers need to make sure they have the right number of people to fulfill the production order, with no labor waste and no labor shortages. But crew management also includes safety and job satisfaction — which are critical to personnel retention.
- Capacity. If you don’t have the capacity to produce enough goods to meet your goals, you’re going to have to rethink your production scheduling. Accounting for capacity allows you to ensure that you’ll be able to meet demand with the available resources.
- Raw materials. Without the correct inventory of raw materials, you won’t be able to manufacture your goods. Considering raw materials from the start also helps you procure them at the best price and quality at the time you’ll need them.
- Workshop logistics. Equipment availability, safety concerns, accounting for the handling and movement of materials, space usage — all of these have an impact on a production schedule.
- Problem-solving. Production scheduling is complex, yet it needs to have flexibility built in to account for disruptions. Considering problem-solving as an essential arm of production scheduling helps you identify issues before they begin and can help you continuously improve the process as the schedule repeats.
- Documented processes. Having a documented approach to production scheduling allows organizations to standardize the process regardless of personnel. It assists with training and quality control, and it helps with troubleshooting at all stages. Documentation is also key for keeping within legal and regulatory guidelines.
What Is Production Scheduling Software?
Computer programs meant to help organizations manage and optimize their production scheduling are referred to as production scheduling software. This kind of software solution assists with allocating resources, mapping production tasks, identifying inefficiencies, monitoring progress, and reporting data to enhance future production schedules.
Production scheduling software usually uses algorithms, advanced analytics, and a series of constraints to optimize production schedules. Just as humans do when they are creating production schedules, this type of software accounts for available resources, capacity, and demand.
Move Beyond Excel for Production Scheduling and Planning
NetSuite Production Management has the capabilities you’re looking for: an optimized software solution for optimizing your production scheduling process. It can grant you the ability to factor in real-time updates from the shop floor, allowing you to use — without hesitation — whichever production scheduling method will help you achieve your goals.
Effective and accurate in everything from processing work orders to managing order fulfillment, NetSuite Production Management supports you at every stage of the production process. It works in lockstep with NetSuite Supply Chain Planning, which can help alleviate concerns about inventory and stockouts using its robust predictive analytics capabilities.
Production scheduling has the capability to take an organization from winging it to soaring. By developing a keen understanding of why production scheduling matters and what their business goals are, businesses can identify the method that will work for them. The rewards: better use of resources and personnel, more efficient operations, and stronger communication for all team members.
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Production Scheduling FAQs
What is the purpose of production scheduling?
Production scheduling assures that manufacturers are maximizing their resources — materials, labor, money — while producing a product. By planning, organizing, and coordinating the manufacturing process before it begins, organizations have a greater chance of meeting their operational goals, such as timing, quality, and consumer demand.
What is the difference between production planning and production scheduling?
Production planning strategically lays out how an organization’s products will be manufactured. It covers much of the same ground as production scheduling, but production planning is more big-picture than production scheduling. Where a production plan outlines operational steps and key resources, a production schedule is far more granular, describing in detail exactly what needs to happen in manufacturing and when.
Why use software for production scheduling?
Software can help manufacturers improve their process and make better use of their resources — which, after all, is the entire goal of production scheduling. By automating manual tasks such as data entry, software frees up human labor to focus on the problem-solving aspect of production scheduling. It also minimizes human error and allows manufacturers to quickly shift gears in case of a sudden change in demand or supply.
The data generated by production scheduling software can be immensely valuable. It reveals where resources aren’t being used efficiently, where bottlenecks are, and where performance may suffer. Software also helps with reporting by creating detailed reports on KPIs.