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.
What it does
- Assigns every operation of a work order to a work center and a start/end time, in routing sequence.
- Is finite-capacity and calendar-aware: operations land only within a work center's working hours and available capacity, and dependent operations stay in order.
- Supports forward scheduling (start as soon as possible from an earliest start) and backward scheduling (finish by the due date, working backward).
- Surfaces utilization, bottlenecks, conflicts, and batching opportunities live as you schedule.
The workspace
The screen (/mfi/scheduling) is a single full-height workspace:
- Header — title, current date range, date navigation (Previous / Today / date picker / Next), the Schedule View Type toggle (Resource / Order / Flow), the Time View Mode toggle (Day / Week / Month), and Refresh.
- Left panel (Resource view) — the Work Center list, used to align rows and filter to one work center.
- Center panel — the active Schedule Board.
- Right panel — the Unscheduled work-order queue, ready to drag onto the board.
- Bottom panel — Metrics and Batching Opportunities (resizable, collapsible).
Time view modes
- Day — hourly detail across the current week (working hours 08:00–17:00).
- Week — current week plus the next three weeks.
- Month — current month plus the next two months.
Your view type and time mode are remembered between sessions.
The three schedule views
| View | Organized by | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Resource | Work center (Gantt, or hourly Calendar for one center) | Loading machines, spotting overloads |
| Order | Work order (operations across selectable WC columns) | Tracking one order end-to-end |
| Flow | Status lanes (Kanban) | Advancing jobs through their lifecycle |
See Schedule Views for details on each.
How scheduling works
- Forward scheduling places operations as early as possible from an earliest start date; backward scheduling places them as late as possible to finish by the due date.
- Each operation is fitted into the next (or previous) available slot on its work center, honoring the center's working-hours/shift calendar.
- Operations are sequenced by routing order and by work-order priority.
- When a request can't be satisfied cleanly, the board reports conflicts (capacity exceeded, due-date violation, earliest-start violation, missing work center, no operations) with suggestions.
Suite pages
- Schedule Views — Resource, Order, and Flow boards in depth.
- Scheduling Work Orders — the unscheduled queue, drag-to-schedule, rescheduling, and conflicts.
- Capacity, Bottlenecks & Batching — the metrics panel and batching opportunities.
Recommended workflow
- Open the board, pick a time mode (Week is a good default) and the Resource view.
- Review the Unscheduled queue (ordered by due date, with overdue/due-soon flags).
- Drag the most urgent work orders onto the right work centers.
- Watch the Metrics panel; rebalance if utilization spikes or a bottleneck appears.
- Resolve any scheduling conflicts using their suggestions.
- Apply worthwhile batching suggestions to cut setup time.
- Use Order View to verify a specific order, and the Flow Board to advance jobs as the floor executes.