Production scheduling with manpower-related tasks - an HMLV use case

Typical for make-to-order companies and all high-mix low-volume manufacturers is the high share of manpower in production. Many tasks, e.g. in assembly or packaging, are carried out entirely by human resources. Here can be a crucial starting point if you want to speed up the production of a job because the job is behind the schedule. You simply use more manpower to complete the task.
Sounds simple, but it's not. After all, how does the planner know how many additional workers he needs to get the delivery done by the desired deadline and what impact the use of those workers will have on the processing of the other jobs?
In my series of blog posts on HMLV production scheduling and its typical challenges, I would like to show here how easy scheduling manpower-related tasks can work.

In make-to-order companies, the standard use case is a task operated by an operator and a machine. But there are also tasks, fully operated by human resources. In software solutions for production scheduling or even in Excel, one usually assigns a worker to a task in order to create a schedule for production. Or one specifies from the outset that a task will always be operated by 2 or 3 workers. But what if you want to add an additional worker to the task to make up for a delay?

For this reason, we have built the "heads" function into just plan it, a production planning software specifically for HMLV production companies.
Using this function, the production planner can manually assign additional human resources for the selected task. The task will be automatically divided into "subtasks" of equal quantity and assigned to the resources that will complete the task at the fastest possible time.

Of course, the entire schedule is automatically recalculated based on the new resource allocation.

But enough of the theory and abstract description.

My colleague Dave has created a very nice short video that shows you how you can achieve a positive effect on the delivery date and the entire schedule by manually adding additional workers to manpower-related tasks.

Tip

Also check out our recorded webinar on "scheduling of manpower-related tasks", which shows the feature "heads" in a more technical background

More use cases

How to squeeze an urgent job into the production schedule /with video

How to use free capacities in your production schedule to increase revenue /with video

Job shops' challenge between on-time delivery, outsourcing & profit /with video