Production scheduling and traceability · Lesson 1 of 4

Production scheduling and traceability: principles and terminology

What scheduling decides and what traceability answers, the AFS job ladder and shop queue, heat numbers and mill test reports, the records that follow an AFS job, and the safety rules a rush never changes.

You will be able to: Define production scheduling, the queue, work in process, flow time, rush and traceability; name the records that follow a job from request to signed delivery; and state the safety duties no schedule changes.

12 min · 12 slides · 8 questions

All lessons in this module

Slide 1 of 12

What scheduling decides

Production scheduling decides the order work is done in and when each job is due, so that machine time, material and delivery dates line up.

The working definition this course uses: traceability answers the questions asked later, namely which material, which drawing, which approval and which process a delivered part came from, and where it went. Both run on records, not memory.

Sources

AFS job stages: New, Quoted, Approved, In the shop, Done, and the rule for moving a job between them - Architectural Flashing Supply
AFS job records: modified profiles saved as new locked profiles, admin audit log, invoice copied from the approved quote, signed delivery receipt - Architectural Flashing Supply

Videos for this lesson

What this video shows: An FMA podcast episode on production scheduling in fabrication shops: scheduling software, work in process, queue times and bottlenecks, with guests from fabrication companies. Their views, not AFS practice.

Video: Optimizing production scheduling in metal fabrication by Fabricators and Manufacturers Association, on YouTube. AFS checked its description against this lesson.

Glossary

Production scheduling: Deciding the order work is done in and when each job is due, so machine time, material and delivery dates line up.
Work in process (inventory): In Little's Law, I: the average number of units in the system between start and finish, such as jobs waiting or being made in a shop.
Flow time: In Little's Law, T: the average time one unit spends in the system from start to finish, the shop's lead time for a job.
Little's Law: Average inventory equals throughput rate times average flow time (I = R x T), with I in units, R in units per unit of time and T in units of time.
Rush (AFS): An AFS job flagged to go to the top of the shop queue. It can be set only by the customer's rush checkbox or an admin's rush toggle, and it never moves a delivery day.
Metrological traceability: The property of a measurement result that relates it to a reference through a documented unbroken chain of calibrations (the VIM definition NIST adopts).
Heat number: An identifier for one production batch of metal, so parts made from it can be traced to it and its mill test report; Portland Bolt explains that each rolling of round bar has its own chemistry and properties, so each gets its own heat number.
Mill test report (MTR): A document from the producing mill giving the chemistry and mechanical properties of a heat of steel; also called a certified mill test report (CMTR) or metallurgical test report.