The last product update of 2019: managers (new role) and KPIs by email

With today’s update we want to thank you, our customers, for the last year of letting us help you bring your production scheduling to the next level. We actually feel that we can look back with some pride as we made a couple of major enhancements to our production scheduling software. My personal highlights were the capability to assign 2 resources to any given task and that we - finally - cracked the code and implemented the send-ahead quantity capability to further reduce your lead times.

We also got really great and insightful feedback from all of you that allowed us to enhance just plan it in ways we ourselves wouldn’t have thought of. So before detailing this last small update of the year 2019, in the name of the entire just plan it team, I just want to say:

THANK YOU and happy holidays! We are looking forward to 2020, to continuing to work with you, and to further enhancing just plan it to best facilitate you in professional production scheduling. -- But now to the actual product update:

Workflow for scheduling routines

In the last couple of updates we slowly but consistently pushed out enhancements to the workflows for scheduling routines. Focusing on this topic is totally on purpose: we have learned that

1. establishing routines is essential for successful scheduling on the long run and
2. that job shop scheduling is team work.

This means that different roles need to be involved with different tasks in the scheduling routine. Here the management also has an important role as the whole ongoing process must be actively authorized by the management. Furthermore the management is the addressee of out the final output. Consequentially we provide the manager role in just plan it now. To do this we added a new property (“Manager”) to user management that you can see and change in the user info section:

This new property does not impact any rights regarding the planning or the shop floor feedback. What this does for now is set you as a recipient of a weekly email, sent every Monday morning at around 0:00 CET containing three major  KPIs:

1. The number of Jobs that have their end date in the last week. This includes both planned jobs and jobs finished through the execute mode.
2. The percentage of jobs in the number above that are past their due dates
3. A list of all finite resources with their available capacity and their used capacity displayed in your planning unit

To be honest: These were just the KPIs we immediately thought of. We know that there is potential for much more meaningful KPIs in just plan it.

These were just the KPIs we immediately thought of to bring a first benefit. But this is just meant as a “first frame” of concept. At this point we want to pass the ball to you:

• What are the KPIs that will help YOU to get the best insights into your scheduling output?
• Have you got any other idea of how we can further fit the “manager” with?

We are waiting for YOUR feedback. YOU will be the ones to further specify the manager role concept . In this regard we are looking forward to getting your emails, chats etc.

We also would like to hear your wish-list for 2020 in general! So if there is anything you feel would add value, no matter how small, don’t be shy to share with us.

With that being said, I again wish all of you happy holidays and a good start in the New Year!

You aren't a just plan it user so far? Why spending more time on maintaining an inappropriate self-made stopgap solution? Why waste more money due to a lack of shopfloor transparency? Book your meeting with a scheduling specialist now and see how easy you can improve your scheduling with just plan it: