Operations Scheduling in job shop type production
Operations scheduling is the organizing function of an operations manager. This function of the operation manager is most important in job shop processing. This is because in job shop processing the variety of items is large the number of items to be produced in a batch is usually less and the machines and workers are versatile and hence perform different types of jobs. In continuous and semi continuous production processes( such as assembly lines) scheduling is automatically done at the time of designing the facility as the product has almost no variety and the production volumes are very large.
Operations scheduling in job shops involves the followings activities:
1.Assigning job orders to different machines ( or work centres)
2. Deciding the sequence of processing on different machines on the basis of some priority ( called sequencing or prioritization.
3.Planning the route of movement of material from one department to another during processing ( called routing)
4.Lessing dispatch lists to the various work centres containing information about the work centres a customer order should be processed at the customer’s order to be processed first the amount of time the processing should take and so on ( called dispatching )
5.Tracking the progress of various scheduled jobs and the implementation of schedules revising the schedules in case of delays and expediting the completion of certain jobs (called expediting).