Production Scheduling (Overview)
Production Scheduling is ianaiERP's finite-capacity scheduling board for the shop floor. It places each work order's routing operations onto specific work centers and time slots, respecting working hours, operation dependencies, and capacity limits — so you always know what runs where and when, and where you're overloaded.
Click through the walkthrough below to explore Production Scheduling.
What it does
- Assigns every operation of a work order to a work center and a specific time, in routing sequence.
- Is finite-capacity: operations are placed against real resource availability, and dependent operations within a work order stay linked — reschedule one, and connected operations shift with it.
- Supports scheduling by dragging work orders from the Unscheduled queue onto the board, and rescheduling by dragging an operation to a new date or resizing it.
- Surfaces utilization, bottlenecks, setup time, off-calendar hours, and batching opportunities live in the footer as you schedule.
- Every view also lets you create new work centers or work orders without leaving the board — see Quick Actions by View below.
The workspace
The screen is a single full-height workspace:
- Header — title, current date range, date navigation (Previous / Today / date picker / Next), the Resources / Work Orders / Flow tabs, a zoom slider for the timeline, and Refresh.
- Left panel (Resources view) — the Work Center list, grouped and collapsible, with an "Any resource" row plus named machines and their live status (Idle, Running, Setup, Down, Maintenance).
- Center panel — the active Schedule Board for whichever tab is selected.
- Right panel — the Unscheduled work-order queue on the Resources and Flow tabs, ready to drag onto the board, with an Add button to create a new work order. The Work Orders tab has no side queue — it adds a work order via a + button above its own search box instead.
- Bottom panel — a Schedule Health footer (Utilization, On-Time, Bottleneck, Setup Time, Off-Calendar) and Batching Opportunities, resizable and collapsible.
The three schedule views
| View | Organized by | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Resources | Work center, with individual machines underneath | Loading machines, spotting overloads, assigning to a specific resource |
| Work Orders | Work order, operations laid out across the timeline | Tracking one order end-to-end |
| Flow | Status lanes (Kanban: Pending → Issued → In Progress → Complete) | Advancing jobs through their lifecycle |
See Schedule Views for details on each.
Quick Actions by View
Each view supports the same core moves — schedule, reschedule, create — but its quick-action shortcuts differ:
| View | You can... |
|---|---|
| Resources | Drag a work order from Unscheduled onto a work center or specific resource to schedule it · Drag an operation to reschedule, or resize it to change duration · Add a new work center via the + button next to the work center search · Add a new work order via + Add in the Unscheduled panel |
| Work Orders | Create a new work order via the + button above the search box · Drag an operation to reschedule — linked operations in the same order shift together · Issue a work order via its ⋮ menu → Issue Work Order, or jump straight into the record via Open work order |
| Flow | Issue a work order by dragging its card from Pending to Issued · Start a work order by dragging its card from Issued to In Progress · Add a new work order via + Add in the Unscheduled panel |
How scheduling works
- Drag a work order from Unscheduled onto a work center (or a specific resource) to place it.
- Operations within the same work order are linked — rescheduling one shifts the connected ones so the sequence stays valid, rather than needing to move each one individually.
- An operation can only be assigned to a specific resource when that resource is available — machines that are Down or already Running won't accept the drop.
- Advancing a work order through the Flow board is a drag between lanes rather than an editing action.
Suite pages
- Schedule Views — Resources, Work Orders, and Flow boards in depth.
- Scheduling Work Orders — the unscheduled queue, drag-to-schedule, and rescheduling.
- Capacity, Bottlenecks & Batching — the Schedule Health footer and batching opportunities.
Recommended workflow
- Open the board on the Resources tab — the default view for loading machines.
- Review the Unscheduled queue on the right.
- Drag the most urgent work orders onto the right work center — or a specific resource within it, if the job needs a particular machine.
- Watch the Schedule Health footer; rebalance if utilization spikes or a bottleneck appears.
- Apply worthwhile batching suggestions to cut setup time.
- Use the Work Orders tab to verify a specific order end-to-end, and the Flow board to advance jobs as the floor executes.
Related Features
- Supply-Demand Intelligence (Overview)
- Manufacturing Cockpit
- Work Orders
- Work Centers
- Routing