Introduction
Capacity Planners & Schedulers are typically the primary end users of APS. Ultimately, the Capacity Planners and Schedulers will be working closely together to keep a manufacturer productive, profitable and efficient.
Capacity Planners are responsible for determining and managing the balance between the demand for the manufacturer’s products with how much work can be completed within a given amount of time and with the amount of labor and other resources that are required.
Schedulers, on the other hand will generally be responsible for determining which jobs should run, at what time, in what sequence and on which production lines.
Key Concepts
Because of the nature of the work that Planners and Schedulers must accomplish, tools that allow them the visibility to see future bottlenecks in production or future spikes and valleys in demand are highly beneficial.
The most visual and commonly used tool in APS is the Gantt Chart, which allows Planners and Schedulers to see the result of their schedules days, weeks, even months in advance.
Manual tools are also essential. For example, choosing to expedite a Job that needs to run today may in fact create a shortage for downstream Jobs in the future. Or a scheduler may need to reschedule work to a preferred resoruce and use “drag-and-drop” to do this.
What-If Scenarios are useful to evaluate proposed changes in resources, demand, or scheduling rules.
Below is a list of links to APS features and functions that are frequently used by Planners and Schedulers.