Product Roundup: Housekeeping For Our Job Shop Scheduling Software

Here is a quick update on what our development team worked on in the past couple of weeks. In essence, we decided to do some housekeeping and to add a few minor things. This now set the ground for us tackling some bigger features and ideas going forward. So this blog post post is about three (small) enhancements and about an outlook what is expected to come.

All of the below is already shipped and live for users of the just plan it job shop scheduling software.

New #1 - Improved scroll behavior in the Job View

This again is a function of the category "you talked, we listened". Initially, we implemented an automatic scroll behavior that let the Gantt chart schedule always scroll horizontally and vertically in a way that the recently edited task was displayed in the upper left hand corner. We completely changed this "philosophy" following the request for more screen stability. In essence:

• If you make changes that have no impact on the schedule at all (e.g. change the customer name via the "manage job details" dialog or change the "color as" value via the "manage task details" dialog) nothing happens at the all. That means: the screen stays at it is.
• If you make changes that have an impact on the horizontal position of a job/task (e.g. change the start time of a task), the schedule just scrolls horizontally - so that the start of the respective job is shown at the left hand side of the visual job shop schedule.
• If you make changes that have an impact on the vertical position of a job (e.g. change the sequence number), the software scrolls vertically to keep the focus on the respective job.

New #2 - Alphabetical order of customer names in filter

OK. No more words needed. If you apply a customer filter, the customer names will show up in alphabetical order.

New #3 - New field in task report

The task report now also includes the respective job's quantity if you work with the Enterprise package.

Here is a short video to see all of the above in action:

Looking ahead: things to come (rather sooner than later)

We got you: talking about stuff that we delivered is great. But even greater is to share the things our development team is working on. We are (not yet) in a position to simply make our entire roadmap public.

However, I am happy to give you a rather solid overview of what you should expect us to ship in the upcoming weeks.

Enhanced XLS upload 

We will rather soon enhance the capabilities of our standard interface to Microsoft Excel. Once this is done, users of the Enterprise package will be able to

• define templates via Excel (like you upload a job with its tasks)
• upload jobs referencing to an existing template (without the need to maintain all tasks in the spreadsheet)

We intend shipping this within the next two weeks from now.

Send-ahead quantity 

This is also a functionality suggested by many Enterprise package users, where you have the capability to plan with quantities. What we mean with "send-ahead quantity" is the following: you have job where you produce 100 pieces. All these pieces get processed on resource 1 first, and then on resource 2. However, resource 2 should not wait until all 100 pieces are finished on resource 1, but can start e.g. after 10 pieces are processed on resource 1. So, the send-ahead quantity of task 1 atresource 1 would be 10. As as result, you'll get overlapping task bars.

We intend shipping this within the next four weeks from now.

Operator app with real-time feedback from shopfloor 

This will be a big thing and it is meant to close the gap between a pure scheduling software and some type of manufacturing execution functionality. So, we will introduce

• the new job & task statuses finished and started
• the new user role "operator" 
• a new view for the operator to provide live feedback to the scheduler
• a stand-alone app for the operator to be able providing this feedback without the need of having a PC access

We intend shippping this in a staged approach, which I expect to start in kind of eight to ten weeks from now.

There is more to come, and more in our minds to build. However, the best ideas are those ideas that you have. So, why not sharing them in the comments below?

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