Production Planning Vocabulary: 10 Terms in Beas Manufacturing

The sequence of operations to make a product, on internal work centres or external providers. Each routing position names the resource and carries its times: Setup time, Mach+Labor Time/unit, Quantity per Time and Idle Time, plus an Overlap Limit to the next operation.

Scheduling and costing both read the routing, so the schedule is only as accurate as this master data. A routing independent of the item master needs item version control.

A machine, work centre or group of people that performs operations. Each resource has Planned capacity (hrs/day), a Number of machines/persons, a shift schedule, a resource calendar and cost rates.

Total net capacity = planned capacity × number of machines/persons × the factory calendar percentage. Planned capacity is net of cleaning, maintenance and other planned downtime, and cannot exceed 24 hours a day.

Gathers all instructions for planning and producing an item. The WO structure view shows each work order with its routings, bills of materials, assemblies, time receipts and materials, with status flags.

Work orders are what APS schedules: each work order operation is dispatched to a resource. Work orders that are logged in (started) are fixed when APS dispatches forward.

Setup time is the time to prepare the operation, calculated per calculation lot size. Mach+Labor Time/unit is the processing time per unit, stated per the Quantity per Time. A separate Setup time Capacity can be held for capacity planning and throughput time.

APS uses these times to decide how long an operation occupies a resource. Wrong times mean a wrong schedule and a wrong post-calculation.

The shift schedule sets a resource's working time; without one, the resource group's shift plan is used. The resource calendar holds exceptions for a period (shift start and end, planned capacity, number of persons) with a reason. Check calendar applies the factory calendar percentage.

APS only plans inside this time. Shifts cannot run over midnight, so night shifts need to be set up with that in mind.

Sets whether the resource has capacity limits that the calculation must respect. With the calculation setting enabled, a resource with resource limits on is never dispatched above 100%, apart from exceptions such as manual APS fixes. When disabled, resource limits and other work orders' time reservations are ignored.

Switch it off for external resources, except those with planned capacity. Changing it needs the APS licence, the licence that adds finite capacity planning.

Backward scheduling works from the delivery date and uses only the end date; forward scheduling works from the start date and uses only the start date. The default calculation types include Backward simulation, Backward Dispatch, Dispatch forward, forward Re-allocate, Catch Up and forward with Material check.

Backward Dispatch is used when material should be purchased as late as possible. Resource-oriented planning is only possible with Dispatch forward. Backward simulation ignores time reservations and material availability.

Another resource that can perform an operation, with its own Setup time, Mach+Labor Time/unit and Use factor. Optimization lets Beas select the most adequate resource during the APS calculation; Allow manual selection controls whether users can switch to it.

Automatic optimization needs the APS licence and must be enabled on the resource, the resource group and the alternative. Alternative resources do not manage secondary times.

Shows planned times by day, week or month for each resource: a summary of all resource utilisation and a chart of capacity and workload in hours for the selected resource. Overloaded days show in red, and the Dispatches button lists the dispatches for the resource.

This is where the planner sees which resource is overloaded and when, the generic idea of a bottleneck. MRP2 gives a similar workload against capacity view per MRP scenario.

The graphical visualisation of the APS schedule on a Gantt chart, per work order or per resource, with resource workload. Work sequences can be moved freely in the graphical view; the After Movement setting decides whether a moved operation is marked, fixed or dispatched.

Moved operations are dispatched, but the following work sequences are not rescheduled; the planner runs Dispatch forward or another calculation type for that. The graphic view needs its own station-related licence.