3. Find a time: booking the steps
Find a time places each step into its work centre’s free hours, day by day, from the date you pick; outside work takes its turnaround in open days. Save books the steps on their centres and the job spans them on the calendar.
Where it is
- Manufacturing → Orders → an order → Edit — Find a time is under the dates
- Workshop calendar (manufacturing) — Where the booked job shows
Settings for this
- Manufacturing → Work centres — Capacity: how many jobs a centre runs at once
- Inventory → Products — A sublet product’s turnaround days
Who this is for: the planner.
What it does
On an order's Edit, press Find a time and pick the day to start From. For each step in routing order it finds the first day the step's work centre has room, takes what the centre has free that day (open hours × the jobs it runs at once, less what is already booked, with 10% spare) and carries on until the step's hours are done. The next step starts where the last one finished, with only the rest of that day.
- Outside work takes no centre time: it goes out on the day the step before finishes, comes back after its turnaround in open days (set on the sublet product), and the next step starts the day after. Same-day work gives the rest of the day back.
- A step with no work centre isn't placed; a centre with no room in four months says so.
It tells you Starts … done …, and whether that is in time for the due date.
Save books it
Press Start … to take the dates, then Save on the Edit dialog. On a released order every step's task is booked on its centre for the days chosen, the workshop job spans them on the calendar, and the order's planned start follows (its due date too, if it had none). A draft order only gets its planned start and due date; book it once it is released.
Moving a booked order
Change Planned start on a released order and tick Move the workshop job to slide every booked step with it, as when you drag the job on the calendar. Or run Find a time again from the new date and Save: the steps are re-placed around what else is booked.
Reading the calendar
Workshop calendar → side: manufacturing shows the booked jobs by work centre, so a week that is over-booked on the laser shows as a wall of blue. The Production TV's Load per work centre is the same picture in hours.
Lesson 3 of 6 in Planning the week. Previous: 2. Releasing an order: priority, components and shortages. Next: 4. The Schedule board: the order each centre runs.