Production planning
Looks weeks or months ahead at every job in your queue. It decides what gets made and when it’s due. Often called the master schedule, it tells you when to hire, take on a big order or invest in equipment.
For Australian fabricators and job shops
Advanced planning and scheduling software
Control labour costs and comfortably get more work out the door on time, making the best use of your capacity.
Definition
What is advanced planning and scheduling software?
Smart Shop Floor's AI Scheduler is advanced planning and scheduling (APS) software that builds your production schedule around the machines, people and materials you actually have. It does two jobs: production planning and shop floor scheduling.
Most job shops plan on spreadsheets or whiteboards and hand out work on the fly. When something changes, the plan falls over and you’re the one firefighting. You set up your steps, timings and constraints once. AI Scheduler uses them to build a schedule your shop can actually hit.
Shop floor scheduling
Sets the hour-by-hour order of work: which job, which operator, which machine. It changes constantly as people call in sick, machines break down and materials run short.
Sound familiar?
What are the most common problems with manual production scheduling?
- You can’t quote an exact delivery date you’re confident you’ll hit
- One rush job and everything behind it slips
- Jobs idling half-finished, waiting on the next step
- Overtime is the only buffer you’ve got
- You spend your day firefighting
- The schedule lives on a whiteboard or in one person’s head
Features
What does advanced planning and scheduling software do?
Builds a schedule that gets more jobs out the door, on time
Schedule Optimisation
When you quote a job, AI Scheduler gives you a delivery date, then protects it. It follows your own steps for each product and finds the sequence that gets every job done on time without running up costs.
Capacity Planning
Before a job is released, AI Scheduler confirms operator availability, machine capacity and materials. Work can only begin once everything is ready.
Bottleneck Management
A bottleneck holds up your entire shop floor and needs strict control to keep it in check. AI Scheduler schedules around the limits of your bottleneck and paces work to keep people productive and lead times short, so jobs don’t sit half-finished.
Adjusts when the plan changes
Problem Detection
Getting on top of trouble early gives you the most options to fix it. AI Scheduler flags a job at risk of running late, a material shortage, conflicting due dates or overtime creeping in, so you can take action.
What-If Scenarios and Rescheduling
AI Scheduler rebuilds the schedule around disruptions and reassigns work to cover for missing people or down equipment. Test a scenario before you commit and see what it does to your delivery dates and costs.
Visual Scheduling
See every job by time, operator, process or work centre. Drag and drop to change the plan, and AI Scheduler adjusts the rest. A digital production board replaces the whiteboard on the shop floor.
Decision Making
How does scheduling software prioritise jobs?
A human scheduler can only juggle a few factors at a time. Advanced planning and scheduling software weighs all six at once and finds the best schedule for your shop.
Due date
The most urgent jobs go first. Jobs are planned to finish before their due date, not on it — giving you some breathing space should a problem arise.
Customer priority
Look after your most important customers. Priority is based on contract value, repeat business or margin, so their jobs go first. Infrequent or low-value jobs wait their turn.
Resource availability
Jobs are only booked on machines, operators and materials that are available. If something’s missing, you’re alerted and the job waits until it’s ready.
Operator skills
Work goes to the operator best rated for the task. Skilled hands mean fewer reworks. Fast hands mean jobs ship on time.
Job routing
Every step of a job is sequenced in the right order, automatically.
Operating hours
Work is planned within your normal working day, with overtime only when it’s critical. Operators are booked at a comfortable capacity, so they have time for everyday dust‑ups.
Results
What results do manufacturers get from scheduling software?
- On-time delivery
- 95%+
- Throughput improvement
- Up to30%
- Wage savings
- 10–20%
Workflow
How do you run a production schedule day to day?
- Step 1
Run the schedule
Add any new orders, absences or breakdowns, then hit go. AI Scheduler creates a draft weekly production schedule.
- Step 2
Review flagged items
Check at-risk or late jobs and drag and drop any changes. Compare what-if scenarios before you commit.
- Step 3
Send it to the floor
The daily schedule goes out to the floor on a smartboard or digital display. Operators get their jobs for the shift, ordered and timed.
- Step 4
Log progress
As jobs are finished, your supervisor logs progress. It feeds straight into the next schedule run.
Success Story
How does scheduling work at a real Australian fabricator?
“Smart Shop Floor has really moved the business forward. We are able to concentrate more on the things we do here and not the busy scheduling side of things, which really has lowered the stress level in the business.”
Stuart Davis, Managing Director, R. Moore & Sons70 staff, 150 machines, 500 components on the floor at once
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