SMB Production Scheduling Blog

The year 2018 had been fantastic for our just plan it production scheduling software. We again more than doubled our number of customers paying for just plan it. In our assessment, by this we definitively reached the milestone that software companies call "confirmed product/market fit". This typically is a milestone at which you start thinking about growth and scale. Well, among others "scale" then translates into "more automation". In that regard, we already made a lot of hidden changes to the just plan it architecture in 2018 to allow a more seamless and continuous deployment of product enhancements and bug fixes into the live system. However, what we still kept manual (before getting product/market fit confirmed) was billing and payments. Time to change this.

In the first quarter of this year, we put our energy on a major redesign of the architecture of our software. Thus we reacted to a core request customers and trial users have been asking us consistently: This has been the request for a more flexible, customer-tailored software "packaging". Here is a sample question we heard endless times: "I like the PRO plan, but would like to add templates to it". As a consequence, we made just plan it modular ... and now facilitate a much more custom-made usage of our production scheduling software. You can define your just plan it "configuration" by your own, and hence just use and pay what you require.

The last, but not least product update of the year finally rounds up what we introduced earlier this year as Execute Mode. Operators (and also planners acting as operators) now can also pause an already started task. We call this "set on hold". With this new functionality, an operator can virtually split a task into a part that is already done and into a part that needs to get scheduled again (and hence executed at a later point of time). When setting a task on hold, users of a PRO plan can specify the remaining runtime, while users of an ENTERPRISE plan can specify the remaining quantity. 

With the September product update, which we just rolled out to all user accounts, we finally close the loop that we had in mind when releasing the Execute Mode for the first time. From now on, operators working on the shopfloor can provide shopfloor information via any kind of mobile device (PC, tablet, smartphone). When operators log in, they no longer see the visual schedule. Instead, they see a list of jobs and tasks scheduled for their resources and can act on them accordingly.

In addition to this, we refined the impact that the job status (released, ordered, planned) has on the job shop scheduling process. Going forward, the job status will have no more influence on the job's priority (sequence number).

The monthly update of our job shop scheduling software has just been rolled out into all user accounts. This time, we've added two new scheduling functions and further enhanced the Execute Mode. All new functionalities are eligible for all customers (and trial users) of the Pro and Enterprise plan.

With respect to scheduling, users are now enabled to split a task with the thus created sub tasks being automatically scheduled. In addition to this, you can now specify an integer capacity level for a resource: a resource with a capacity level of 2 will complete a task in half of the time than a resource with a capacity level of 1.

When working with the Execute Mode, we now made it easier to set back the planning start and to bulk reject feedback data set by your operators. Last but not least, a couple of bugs have been fixed.

We just shipped the monthly update of our easy time and resource scheduling software. With the update, we further enhanced the Execute Mode by first introducing the role of the operator who is just tasked with setting data from the shopfloor. Second, we also made it easier for an operator to identify and select the resource that he is supposed to set the data for. In addition to this, we also created a new view for scheduling purposes: it is named the Resource View and just looks at resources without showing the resource groups (as consequence we had to rename the view which had been called Resource View so far). Last but not least, we made a change to the overall menu structure. We know that this might cause an initial confusion, but are confident that this is the right move (in the long run): we re-arranged the main navigation to follow our approach of what we call the visual scheduling cycle: update, understand, schedule, report, execute.

We are rolling out a new version of our job shop scheduling software to all customers and trial users. In this update, we enhanced the Execute Mode that we released a month ago. Operators can now also report the "remaining time from now" and leave a textual message on a task. In addition to this, we also added three features that increase the usability of our production scheduling software.

Our easy time and resource scheduling software for SMB manufacturers recently got recognized with two renowned German awards. just plan it, the leading job shop scheduling software, was ranked as one of the best vertical solutions within the "Innovationspreis IT for SMBs" (innovation award IT for SMBs). Second, the software is also rated as "Best of Industrie", which marks it as a leading solution for manufacturing industries.  

As of today we have rolled out a new version of our job shop scheduling software to all active accounts. This means to all customers and trial users. Of course, the highlight is the new Execute Mode, which I covered in an extra blog post. With today's shipment, we decided to add some further extras (besides the usual bug fixing) on top of the Execute Mode. The extras are the integration of a support chat box into the application, enhancements of the job and task report, and more Excel upload power.

In my last blog post in January, I spoke about our roadmap. I informed you that we put some obvious things on hold to spend some time and energy on the not so obvious facets of building and running a product like just plan it. Now, I am excited to share the general availability of a long awaited (obvious) functionality: we call it the Execute Mode. The Execute Mode is available for all PRO and ENTERPRISE customers (click to compare the pricing plans).

On the list of ideas we got from all our customers and users, the capability introduced with the Execute Mode is the - by far - most prominent feature request. It enables you to easily integrate information from the shopfloor into your schedule and empowers you to keep your schedule current in a straightforward way. With the Execute Mode, job shop scheduling meets manufacturing execution.

This blog post is meant to be an introduction into the Execute Mode. It is not the core documentation of it. Within the blog post, I reference a lot of additional learning and enablement material.