Production Scheduling

Overview

The purpose of the production scheduling feature in Tekla PowerFab is to provide improved visibility to the planned and actual production times as well as resource allocation in the short and long term. There are several aspects of this feature that can be used independently but that also work together for enhanced power and flexibility:

• Using production codes to apply targeted labor averages from estimating to the production bill of materials for reporting on planned production hours.
• Linking the project schedule to production statuses to show the planned hours of each task.
• Assigning project schedule tasks to a resource to maintain the capacity and overall allocation of that resource on the production schedule.
• Entering or importing time tracking data associated with a schedule task, with regular and overtime hours shown both on the project schedule and the production schedule.

Production Codes

The basic problem with linking estimating labor to production control is there may have been significant changes to the line items between the quote and detailed bill of materials. Since we can't rely on a 1-for-1 linkage we need to work based on labor averages.

Production codes are the mechanism used to apply labor averages from estimating to the production control bill of materials. They are used to group together material with similar work so that the MHrs/Ton average from the estimating line items with a particular production code can be applied to the weight of the production control line items with reliable accuracy.

Production codes can be applied on whatever level you choose - there can be 5 different production codes or 100. In fact, not entering anything into the production code is a perfectly valid value for applying the labor average. If you do not enter any production codes into estimating or production control then the MHrs/Ton labor average for the estimate as a whole will be applied to the weight of each line item in production control.

Reports are available in production control showing the summary include planned hours broken out by sequence, lot, category, sub-category, etc. The MHrs and MHrs/Each are also available as display fields to include right on your bill of materials screen.

Click here for more information on setting up and using production codes to apply labor from the estimating to the production control job

Applying Hours to the Project Schedule Tasks

Since the project scheduling feature was first added in Tekla PowerFab, the schedule tasks could be assigned a status link option to pull completion status such as drawing approvals, purchasing, receiving, production, and shipping. Tekla PowerFab has since added a status link option called Station Progress that allows a schedule task to be linked to the completion status of a single station rather than the overall production status.

With the addition of planned hours in production control the receiving, production, station, and shipping status link options can pull the planned hours into the project schedule as well. An Activity field in Maintenance > Estimating > Labor Maintenance > Labor Groups indicates whether the time for that labor group should be distributed to detailing, receiving, production, or shipping tasks. The Station Detail screen now has options to associate individual labor groups with each production station, used for distributing planned hours to tasks with the Station Progress status link option.

If you do not use the production codes to apply estimating labor to the production control job then the status link options will not automatically update the planned hours on the schedule tasks. However, you can enter the hours directly on the schedule tasks in the Gantt Chart so that the rest of the production scheduling features will be available to you.

When the time tracking features are used then the actual regular and overtime hours worked can also be shown on the Gantt Chart. Tasks where the percentage of planned hours worked is greater than the percent complete are highlighted on the Gantt Chart and the schedule reports.

Resources and the Production Schedule

Showing the planned hours on the project schedule provides a good view of the overall project requirements but does not in itself show the perspective of how those hours will fit in with the other active projects. You can create as many resources as desired on the Resource Maintenance screen. Each resource has a default capacity that can be adjusted for individual date periods. You can have a single resource representing 'The Shop' or many separate resources representing the individual workstations in the shop - each one with it's own capacity so that bottlenecks can be identified.

Individual tasks on the project schedule can then be assigned to a resource. When assigned to a resource the task will appear on the production schedule for that resource. The production schedule shows the tasks assigned to the resources, the available capacity, and the total hours applied to each date period of the resource from schedule tasks in any active project. You can zoom into the production schedule to see the capacity and allocation by day, or zoom out to view it by week or month. Date periods that are over-allocated are highlighted in red, and adjustments can then be made to how the tasks are applied to the production schedule to even them out.

When the time tracking features are used the actual regular and overtime hours worked will appear on the production schedule.

Time Tracking

The time tracking features all the actual hours (regular, overtime, and double overtime) worked to be entered or imported for visibility in the project and production schedules. There are many fields that you can use to identify what the employee was working on including project, task station, sequence, lot #, category, sub-category, pay category, main mark, and piece mark as well as up to 5 user-defined fields. The time tracking settings can be adjusted to make as many, or as few, of them available as you prefer. Records can also be entered through Remote Link, allowing the data to be captured in real-time from the shop floor.

The regular and overtime hours worked on a project can be shown on the Gantt Chart view of the project schedule as well as on the Production Schedule. Tasks where the percentage of planned hours worked is greater than the percent complete are highlighted on the Gantt Chart and the schedule reports.