Pool planning

Basic principle

Companies with machinery consisting of several equivalent machines cannot always decide in the BOM and routing what machine to use when it is time to perform the operation. Work centers with, e.g., the numbers 4001, 4002, and 4003, can be linked to a work center of the type Pool that has the number 4000. In that case, the BOM and routing will be made in the pool work center 4000 and the pool planning will delegate the operation to one of the work centers linked to the pool. The pool planning makes it easier for you when you do the loading plan, the priority planning, and the check of delivery times. However, the pool planning cause a consequence In the loading plan: operations in the pool work center are shown as loading, but the capacity in the pool work center is not included.

The purpose is to delegate operations registered for the pool to the incorporated work centers. In the Priority plan box there is a function button that will suggest a new work center for each operation to be changed to, based on the work center that gets the earliest date for New finish.

In the Work center A work center is a part of the factory. It can be a single machine or a group of machines, a single workstation or a group of workstations. register procedure, you can register that work centers should be of the type Pool and link work centers to the pool work center. These pool work centers are then available to select in the pool planning.

Operations that are not started can be moved from the pool work center to the incorporated work centers, or between the incorporated work centers. You can drag and drop them manually with the mouse pointer from the list and drop on another work center in the Related work center box. If you change work center, the suggested work centers in the pool work center will be updated.

If you enter a work center of the type Pool in the Priority planning procedure, a message will appear informing you that it must be handled in the Pool planning procedure in order for you to see the priority plan.

Calculation

The first operation is entered. After that, the system will simulate a date for New finish for the incorporated work centers. The work center with the earliest New finish will be suggested. This forms the basis for analysis for the next operation.

When calculating a date for New finish, the operations in progress are always taken into consideration. The remaining time for the operation in progress is the time that is left, that is, the time which has passed from the start has been deducted.

Change work center

In the field where you select work center, it is only possible to enter or select a work center of the Pool type. There are three ways to change work center for the operations:

• Enter a new work center for the operation in the priority plan of the pool.
• Manually drag and drop the operation from the pool to the work center that should perform the operation.
• Change to the work center suggested based on which work center that will get the earliest date for New finish.

If the work center for an operation in the pool is changed, the operations below in the priority plan will be recalculated. In the header row of the procedure there is a filter called Time horizon. This can be used to filter the planning by entered time horizon (in work days). The filtering is done by the planned finish date. This way it is possible to hide operations which are too far ahead in time. Normally, you only wish to delegate operations within the next few days.

The New finish date for the operations in the pool are based on what the date would be in the priority plan of the selected work center, if they were confirmed. If no work center is selected, no New finish date will be shown for the operation of the pool work center. If you change work center, you can also replan the operations timewise. The operations will get the same finish date by default, but you can replan them according to the New finish date in the new work center.

Reporting

For operations that are still planned in the pool work center, it is mandatory to select a work center which included in the pool, since a pool work center itself cannot perform any operations.

Check delivery times (CDT CDT is short for check delivery times and it is a function on order rows which calculates when the order row in question can be delivered, taking lead times and throughput times into consideration. CDT also checks if existing orders and suggestions can cover material shortages, if any, and affects when the order row can be delivered.)

You will be suggested to change to the work center that results in the earliest finish date/delivery date. Even if the check delivery times does not directly change to the work center, the finish date/delivery date will be based on the work center that can finish the operation at the earliest date.

The loading from the pool and the included work centers are combined and compared to the capacity for the included work centers. This provides a complete loading for the work centers and can thereby be used to search for available capacity for additional loading.