Scheduling at your plant?

[KOB]

Hello all,
I am working on an article on scheduling for AP. Don Goldman says:

"The schedule board often is the centeral place for production meetings run 1 to 3 times a day ending with reshuffling of the schedule cards. At best, many printers use these boards to load the plant which organizes the work by due dates and makes an attempt to indicate when key operations, usually only the presses, need to be completed."

Don adds that: "Real scheduling looks at the entire plant and sequences the work for maximum plant optimization."

I'm curious. Does your plant use a scheduling program, maybe part of your MIS? Would you say the whole plant is optimized? Or just the pressroom? Does your scheduling system work?

Thanks
KOB
American Printer

[pmkprog]

How are you to adequately schedule jobs when sales people promise jobs to be done in a schedule that would work if nothing else was in the shop? How do you schedule jobs to run on press and not have color accurate approved proofs shipped back from the customer? Finally, how can you schedule more press time than 24 hours in a day?

These are the questions I have, because that is exactly what's wrong with our scheduling system.

[TimS]

Same questions as pmkprog.

At the last shop I worked at they invested in a MIS system, but unfortunately it required an advanced MIS degree to figure it out, and then you could only see parts of the schedule on a computer screen, and if you tried to look at the whole thing it was really tiny.

It was abandoned because everyone agreed the columns of little 3x5 notecards with coloured magnets on a wall-sized magnet board worked best. With one glance you can see the whole shop. And it allowed the production manager to stand there frowning and rubbing his chin, trying to figure out how to answer pmkprogs questions.

[seetomtype]

We use big dry erase boards. Just like TimS said, you can see all the jobs
in the shop at a glance. Our production manager also acts the same way.

[jimking]

Just wondering KOB, are you the American Printer (real plant) thats off Kennelworth Ave. in Maryland near Peak Printers? :?: If so, I've always heard good things about that plant.

[KOB]

I wish I could say I was that KOB. I am Katherine O'Brien of American Printer Magazine, tho.

All the best,
KOB
http://americanprinter.com/about/

[DCurry]

KOB - I was just reading a recent issue of your magazine and saw that you mentioned these very forums in your editor's note at the beginning of the magazine. We're getting famous!

To answer your question my shop uses a board with moveable cards just like you mentioned. It gets reshuffled 2-3 times a day based on whatever the current emergency is, but mostly just for the presses. There are sections for prepress and an "out on proof" area so you can tell at a glance if the job is in prepress or in the customer's hands. No software is used. Works pretty well for us, but as with anything I'm sure it could be improved if people were motivated and followed through properly.

[tbJAMMIN]

I was recently (six months ago) put in charge of scheduling at my plant. We are an offset web printing company that owns approximately 60% of the publications that we print.

The reason that I got the job was the amount of complaining that I was doing of the obvious flaws in our scheduling process.

So, my plan was to do scheduling by committee, we use a large magnet board that includes the 3 press lines and 3 bindery lines. I am the prepress manager, and have the luxury of new equipment and online proofing, so the prepress time on most jobs is a couple of hours (after customers upload and approve) and not worth scheduling.

The "scheduling by committee" involved having a daily production meeting at the board where all of the department managers, including sales, gathered to do the job planning for the next two weeks on the schedule. The discussing of the next two weeks was supposed to be a foolproof way to not get all of the info to all of the departments by discussing each job a total of 10 times before it actually ran on press.

It seemed to me, that by all of the departments having a say in scheduling, it would eliminate all of the ridiculous mistakes that I had seen in the past, such as scheduling things to run on press before the customer actually said that they were going to supply files.

The breakdown in this way of scheduling is all of the suprise jobs that pop up every week. We are not in a financial position to require our sales people to give us more that 2 weeks notice of every new account, therefore you get all of these suprise jobs that totally disrupt the schedule. The catch 22 is that by allowing these changes to happen, you start losing the customers by changing their deliveries to make room for all of these suprise accounts thus creating room for more suprises in the future.

I would really be interested in reading your article, when do you plan on getting it in??

[LoganBlade]

I will probably be told what a evil thing i am doing but the schedule is in my head. We have a 1 shift operation and management believes saying no is not an option. People that have read my threads know i complain about my prepress guy. If he is doing his job the way it should be done jobs should be in and out same day. I can look at CSR who handles all proof customer contact and I inform him what to rush back if presses have certain colors and try to make sure the same colors run same day as much as possible. The Bindery then follows and with a whole 3 people it is tough but i have more folding power than most for the staff (3 folders .. 1 MBO 20 and MBO26 ) step in when needed so plan to maximize production thru put but typ and date. Started a more formal update after staf leaves and plan next day for them. BUT to get back ot the question

I use my wonderful head no board...

I dont't get sick... and my CSR and I talk so we have a good flow going on production. I am lucky to have hi. He has more than once helped me.

[beermonster]

we too use the ticket/time based production board

its split into days, each ticket coloured, numbered according to job number, and is an approximate length to cover print time (so it could be 1 day long, or 5 days - whatever.

subsequent tickets of the same colour follow through for each department, cut crease, stripping, glueing, outworking etc

yes it gets re-arranged frequently and keeps us on our toes - but hey - if thats what it takes to keep in work then so be it. yes - wer have to turn jobs round VERY quick, but then again - if we didnt china would get the job.......

a great deal of rearranging does stem from availability of board. if some got stuck on a ferry due to bad weather - we aint gonna be printing that job, so we do the next available

it works until someone brings in a job at 2pm, needing 10 cromalins by 3 pm - having neglected to prepare you for that at the 9 am daily meeting....very sporting