The company achieves the objective of satisfying the demand in: quantity, quality, price and above all on time optimizing the use of raw materials, supplies, materials, human resources, equipment and facilities. Also seeking the growth of the activity of the company over time, organizing production.
To optimize it is necessary to plan, in this way the expense that adds added value will be more profitable.
Coordination of sales, production, warehouses and purchases is essential.
Once the needs of the sales sector have been established , the production scheduling is carried out , the stock of PM, supplies and materials is controlled, what is necessary is requested to produce in a timely manner.
The planning sector
When machine stops begin for various reasons, there is a need for a sector that manages to coordinate the aforementioned operations. The sector is not about sales, it is not about warehouses, it is not about purchasing, it is not about production, but it must know and coordinate these operations, plan and control production, tending to avoid imbalances.
The problems that can arise are several. Missing MO (labor), failure of some machine, missing PM (raw material), some input, some material. Any of them is fatal to production and can occur in the event of loss of sales. Any of them can also be left over and this produces high costs, even if it is not storage, which results in an increase in the cost of production.
All of this can be avoided with proper production planning (and control).
In a small company, the task of planning and controlling production is carried out by the owner, it does not have to be something impossible to do for an entire sector. If the owner says that you have to produce such a thing, the entire company must do that. The same should be the case with the sector responsible for such tasks in a large company.
If the micro-enterprise grows, some owners manage to overcome the difficulties by hiring a manager, a general foreman, to whom they delegate tasks. But if the company gets bigger even so, things could start to get out of hand, you will have to start writing in a notebook type agenda. Until he realizes that even with this he manages to reduce factory downtime and lack of production when it is most necessary to increase.
Alone, without anyone telling you, you should realize that it is necessary to have an assistant responsible for these tasks. If you do not have an organized scheme of authorities to assign production orders, this also usually ends in failure. The authority is in the order of production.
Basis of production scheduling or planning
It is necessarily based on something known, the standard of production. Initially defined in the company creation project. General guidelines such as the process used, the possible stock, the storage capacity, the production capacity, etc. are set in it. But if it is necessary to change the process, invest in machines, hire more labor, this possibility should be considered only for the future by presenting the corresponding investment plan or project (subject seen in business plans).
Fulfilling the task is to schedule annual, monthly, weekly, daily production and then control in the opposite direction, day by day, week by week, month by month, throughout the productive year.
In the course of the year or in a certain period of time, the budget for the following year must also be addressed and so on, trying to comply with the budget of course.
Differences between projecting the company and planning production
In my previous writings about what we need to achieve our long-awaited Agroindustrial Argentina, you will notice a relationship with the previous texts.
The preparation and presentation of projects requires a lot of engineering to achieve satisfactory results, as we mentioned in it, the initial production standard is proposed but it is not the same. The difference are:
- When projecting, it is estimated what would happen when doing this or that task / product.When planning, you must know exactly what, how and with what to do what needs to be done.When projecting, you can manage times by delaying concretions to review the process well. When planning time is not variable. Improvisations cause problems of factory shutdowns. When it is projected it is without movement of funds (money). When planning is arranged there are movement of funds, material commitments, labor hiring, etc., etc.
What is necessary to have to be able to plan
The idea is not to plan in the air with estimates given from secondary data. Now the company is in full production and you have to be efficient. You need to have primary real data.
Budget or sales forecast
Already mentioned, the starting point is the budget or sales forecast.
In fact, if the premises indicated when dealing with the project or business plan are fulfilled in any way, there is always the budget or sales forecast. It must exist, it is the basics for the planner. Right or wrong, intuitive, secret, formal, with market research based on demand statistics, calculated with any available application method. The sales forecast is as a starting point.
Production standard
This data is very important, the costs are based on it. The steps carried out must be controlled by detecting the differences between the actual spent and the production standards for each item in each of the points in question: Raw material, supplies, materials, HH., HM.
If differences of great value are detected, the standard will have to be rethought or someone is stealing.
Production engineering can design another process to manufacture the same, costs must be recalculated considering all the elements that directly affect the good.
Production capabilities
This is limiting. More of it cannot be done. It can be given in hours, shifts, days, weeks, months.
Calculations can be made by expressing combinations: machine time is HM (machine hours), labor time of labor is HH (man hours). These are all very important data in industrial calculations.
If all the day-to-day hours were dedicated to work (taking into account only the time restrictions of labor agreements) we would have the possible capacity.
Possible capacity
If the work scheme given by the company is considered in consideration of the shifts, days of the week. The capacity in this case is called available.
Available capacity
If, in addition, for the purposes of considering only productive times, production stoppages are subtracted for preventively scheduled tasks, such as for maintenance or cleaning. The capacity with this limitation is programmable. Which is the one that interests programming.
Programmable capacity
If they are considered to subtract all the times in which there is no production, foreseeable or not, permanent or not. The nominal capacity is determined.
Rated capacity
There is also the possibility of calculating the real capacity, after a certain period of work.
Actual capacity
Storage capacity
In small companies without a management board, they are defined more than anything by the capacities of the deposits of raw materials, inputs, materials and finished products.
The production plan
The idea that the merchandise is available at the time of sale or order at a lower cost of production.
It is to meet sales forecasts. Now, if from the outset it is seen that the forecasts are greater than the production possibilities in a timely manner, the sales sector should be informed to reduce its claims and consider the possibility of proposing an investment plan for the next fiscal year.
The data and points to control
The data to control are: Sales (or used), Production, Stock (PT and Interprocess).
Interprocess control is also called in-process production control, it has control points.
The control sheets are called accumulated control and in this the data to read immediately is the current stock. As seen in material replenishment, it is the one that is compared with the order point.
Current Stock = Previous Stock + Production - Sales
Of course the calculation is for each item, depending on the current stock, the orders will be assigned. If it is the finished product. The order will be made to production. If it is about raw materials, supplies, materials, the order will be made to purchases.
Schedule production
To assemble the form we must know the period to be programmed for each product. It can be daily, weekly, deweekly, biweekly.
The production programmer analyst must know the processes and have updated information. He must produce with the formula or, in the way designed with all the necessary characteristics such as quantities, units of measurements used.
You must know the flow of operations and instructions for each work / rest / maintenance station.
It must have all the details to achieve a correct coordination that allows a correct comparison with the standard, controlling step by step element by element detecting the differences that may be in greater or lesser use, that is, who causes loss or gain with respect to the standard.
From the moment the production order is triggered, until the product is finished, certain periodic controls must be carried out (every hour / every shift / every day / every week) with accumulated information sheets for each of the elements. Let MP, inputs, materials, PT.
However, you do not need to know the stock / orders at the time of scheduling, these are tasks in the supply sector, a topic already discussed when looking at the replenishment of materials for the logistics, supply, purchasing and warehouses sectors.
The production scheduler only needs to give the production order.
Everything that is planning is designed towards the product, in the jargon this is called implosion. When a production order is issued, the explosion occurs. It's like a pellet is fired where each ball has a defined destination. These destinations we could call control stations.
Full programming
Year: 100 thousand per year The unit of measurement can be as expressed above.
Month: 100 thousand / 12. = 8344, per month.
Week: 8334 / 4.4 = 1894, per week.
Day: 1894/7 = 270, per day.
Turn: 270/3 = 90, per turn.
Time: 90/8 = 11.25 per hour.
Making 12 units per hour could fulfill the request for a year.
We know the difference between this calculation which is the available capacity of the programmable capacity.
Standard programming
Let's now see the same calculation for an 8-hour job, from Monday to Friday, considering a month of vacation for all personnel except maintenance.
100 thousand units / year
100 thousand / 11 = 99090.90 approx. = 9100 units / month.
9100 / 4.4 = 2060 approx. = 2100 units / week.
2100/5 = 420 units / day.
420/8 = 52.5 approx. 51 units / hour.
Machine capacity
Scheduled capacity. Previously estimated value based on machine data in order to start the programming operation.
Capacity not ready. It is to prepare but it lacks the necessary input calculations.
Ready capacity. Value prepared and evaluated with knowledge of the necessary inputs.
Available capacity. It is ready to go to the productive sector and warehouses.
Locked capacity. It is the capacity available for the productive sector because it does not have a ready input.
Assigned capacity. It is the one that went to the productive sector.
The load pending allocation includes the remaining available + locked + ready or not.
Capacity concluded. Charge finished. The rest is unrealized capacity.
For control, this must be reported back and forth, one way and the other.
The times that are managed in programming to achieve an assigned capacity should be taken according to their routine movement. If it is too short, loads should be reassigned from one period to another constantly causing confusion quickly. If the process is too long and the stations are few, the progress of the manufacturing could not be controlled properly.
The periods depend on the work schedule. For a one-shift schedule, the ideal would be weekly.
The point is to work on it every day. Not only programming and letting the rest work, the control is more laborious than the programming itself.
Other production stoppage problems
We can consider other aspects that cause unscheduled production stoppages.
They are not scheduled, but since they are known and may occur and that must also be reported as a reason for non-compliance, they must be classified to obtain clear information. In one sense and another.
One of the most common: Machine breakdown, we could mention: RM 00:00
Another typical case in a company is absenteeism due to illness: ENF XXD
There are also strikes: HUE
The lack of an input can also occur: FI.
It is very common for a cut in the CE power supply to occur.
Machine data
It is necessary to know these data to balance production operations. The idea is that the balance is made when the company projects. In other words, the production of the machines is already thought out and evaluated in the project
Considering for example.
Machine 1: Production capacity: 200 units in 8 hours with two operators.
Machine 2: Production capacity: 100 units in 8 hours with one operator.
Machine 3: Production capacity: 50 units in 8 hours with three operators.
The 7 machines are needed with 16 operators working 8 hours to produce 200 units of article A1.
This would be ideal, it does not mean that with good and efficient programming it is possible to work like this.
In order to start dealing with the Maq. 2 must have before the produced in the Maq. 1, and so on.
To understand this, let's look at an initial programming case with zero stocks on each item.
These will then be added to the schedule one by one until the business day is complete.
Defined produce art. A1 a package of 50 ea.
Maq. 1:25 hour / maq. 1 machine to manufacture 50 we need 2 hours.
Maq. 2: 12.5 hour / maq. 2 machines to manufacture 50 we need 4 hours. We cannot start with stock 0, it is expected that the Maq 1 has produced 50%.
Maq. 3 A: 6 hour / maq. 4 machines to manufacture 50 we need 8 hours. Idem previous case, with the addition that in this case it exceeds the weekly hours. We opted for the design of:
Defined produce art. A2 a pack of 100 each. and we mark different in the previous graph
Maq. 1:25 hour / maq. 1 machine to manufacture 100 we need 4 hours.
Maq. 2: 12.5 hour / maq. 2 machines to manufacture 100 we need 8 hours.
Maq. 3 A: 6 hour / maq. 4 machines to manufacture 100 we need 16 hours. We opted for the design of:
To be able to observe the planning of more than a week, we simply enlarge the graph, given the capacity of the sheet we reduce the presentation and so on until we complete the 5 days of the week.
Now you can see the empty spaces that a good programming should try to eliminate.
These can be achieved with one of the crucial points in planning, which is stock control.
As we see now, it is not just about raw materials, supplies, materials, but it is also necessary to control stock at different points in the manufacturing process. These are the special points that are referred to as control stations. It should be added to each point of the article.
That is to say that the article A1, has stages of Maq. 1, Maq. 2, etc. Depending on the consumption of such machines, we must program the interprocess production stocks so as not to have empty spaces in the programming.
Stock control sheets
We can have worksheets for each article and also for each article, at each point to be controlled we could consider standard control forms according to the example.
We will see here that other concepts appear, such as delays. This is what often forces to reschedule some production loads to achieve delivery on time.
The spreadsheets can be designed to monitor month by month, week by week, day by day.
