Manufacturing Firm

[Andrew Cornwell]

We are a manufacturing firm specializing in cement products. We do not use
any machines as resources, all our products are hand layed into a mold. I
need help setting up my shops' resources and schedules. I have used excel
until now, but now I need something more complex to help me know when I am
overscheduling a certain resource or department. My resources are employees,
cement, and molds themselves. How would I set it up to know when a mold I
need to use is going to be available? Any help setting this up or if anyone
knows any templates designed towards what I am looking for would be a huge
help.

Thank you.

 

[Catfish Hunter]

Go to View>Resource Sheet.
This is where you can set up resources. Resources can be people, equipment,
molds......
If you only have one mold then your max number for molds is 1....
You will also need to make logic ties in the schedule for the use of the
mold and all other task in your schedule. (Use Mold on Unit
1-------FS-0------Use Mold on Unit 2)
Does this help?

 

[John Sitka]

The "first and most important thing" is how are you
going to record the actual progress of your tasks.
You can not meet your main requirement of ....
"but now I need something more complex to help me know when I am
overscheduling a certain resource or department"

without timely disciplined status updates....
upon task completion
upon task change
and end of shift.

You could have a fellow running around with a clipboard each and everyday
and recording actuals into project or you could exploit a distributed "task list"
with something like Project Server.

Please fill us in with an example task list for what you would consider a discrete deliverable.

is it one big mold that takes an hour to "pop out" or is the deliverable a set of many components spurned on by a Job order that may
run for days.
would these be built to order or built to stock?
are the components making up this deliverable bound by any logical before after relationship? (construct a mold has to happen before
I cast 5 pieces)

Everything comes from disciplined and timely status updates. Start thinking of the gathering mechanism now.
It does you no good to sit down to schedule in the morning when you need to make decisions
on what to do next when you do not have in front of you a status of what happened last night.
Your only option would be to run out into the yard(shop) and observe, run back to Project, enter actuals
run back to another part of the yard, come back to Project enter actuals, and so on. Then put your thinking cap
on and decide what to do next in order to meet deadlines.

Two things then...
The definition of your deliverables (the things with customer deadlines attached to them, or build to stock internal deadlines)
How are you going to get work progress collected and into Project

 

[Catfish Hunter]

The simplist and most efficent way to get updates is through a daily or
weekly meeting. I have used this for the past 25 years working on projects
exceding $350,000,000.00. You can set up a filter to only look at the next
day or days of task comming up. Here's the set up for the filter:
Project>Filter
LINE ONE=
FIELD NAME: Start
TEST: is less than or equal to
VALUE: "And before:"
LINE 2=
AND
FIELD NAME: % Complete
TEST: Does not equal
VALUE: 100%
John, try some decaf.

 

[Andrew Cornwell]

Here is my current process...

1) We receive order of custom products from customer.
2) Sales gives me the sales order
3) I create a work order for my production crew
a) mold is made/modified, whatever is needed for particular part
b) mold goes to production where it is filled by crew
c) parts are pulled from mold and sent to finishing
d) finishing patches and cleans up part and prepares for shipping
e) product is shipped

Currently, all my info is an excel spreadsheet for each job and a crude
overall schedule on another spreadsheet. My problem I run into is when I get
an order for parts that will use molds that are currently in production right
now. I have a difficult time knowing when a mold will become available and
quoting accurate lead time.

The company is fairly young, only 3 years old, and we have seen an increase
from 7-10 concurrently running jobs to over 20 in the last 3 months. My
previous method with excel spreadsheets and a clipboard worked fine with only
a few jobs at a time. My vision is to have a master shcedule which is
connected through critical paths and such to keep me from scheduling a mold
to be used twice at the same time that I give to me shop supervisor and he
can check off each day what got done and I can update my schedule accordingly.

More information...

We manufacture cement and gypsum columns and trims for archtectural use in
residential and commercial construction. We have three products, all of
which use the same molds to make, but have different processes.

1) Gypsum - approximately 20-60 minutes per mold to lay the part, and 60
minutes before demolding can occur. Another 30 minutes to demold and prep
the mold for another part. Therefore in a perfect world approx. 4 gypsum
parts could be made in a single mold per day.

2) Paint Grade Cement - same properties and process as gypsum

3) Colored Cement - This process consists of 1-2 hours to lay the part.
This material takes 10-12 hours before demolding can begin. 30 minutes to
demold and prep for next part. When not running two shifts, this process
yields me one part per mold per day.


Also, most our work is made to order, we do stock one product that has 8
different sizes to it. So, all jobs have customer defined delivery dates
that they request
I am not sure if that information helps you understand a little more what I
do but I hope it does. Thank you for all your help it is greatly appreciated.

 

[John Sitka]

Thanks.
Was it my Relations teacher who said
"Always Always Always satisfy the restrictions first"

So

1) Gypsum - approximately 20-60 minutes per mold to lay the part, and 60
minutes before demolding can occur. Another 30 minutes to demold and prep
the mold for another part. Therefore in a perfect world approx. 4 gypsum
parts could be made in a single mold per day.

This is easily recordable by a person following the three rules of status tracking

Why must this be done and not put off until next mornings or next weeks meeting because with 20 projects on the go
all competing in a finite resource situation. "Bullshit baffels brains." Which is most of what gantt charts and planning is.
The immutable fact is that to accomplish anything WORK has to come to bear on a task. The sun rising and setting
dose not mean things are getting done. But a worker in charge of that GYPSUM mold declaring I'm done. Cuts through
all the human BS AND gives a scheduling tool such as Project the ability to work for you.

Let's create a scenerio based on your best case. 4 Gypsum parts. After part #2 the mold is damaged.
so only two parts for today. The guy comes in to fix the mold during the night And first thing next day 2 more complete the set
of 4 and that mold is freed up to NOW begin what it was supposed to have had half done. The downstream plan or schedule
is affected adversly obviously. The "cornice(?) resource" was waiting around and sombody came by and said what are you
waiting for. "The 2 late Gypsum parts" He gets flak and some brainyack says "jump to this other work order".
So the cornice guy starts a task that will run for two days and your original Set of 4 gypsum columns is now 3 days late!
You had no visability that morning to make sure that the handoffs of the original set of 4 maintained it's fast original track.
Why? because you did not have the accurate picture of what task was completed.
Even in this trivial case It's crucial to have tasks actuals very current. Add 20 WIP Sales Orders and 50 Resources.
No one can optimize a schedule without constant input of actuals.
Your task duration demands this, and the fact that it is a multi project finite resource manufacturing environment.

 

[John Sitka]

John, try some decaf.

Uhh so what does one say

Shut up Grandpa! ;-)

 

[Catfish Hunter]

It's hard for me to get the whole picture of what's needed there so here is a
stab at what I see:
1) I would either create a project named the WO number or create a project
with a summary task by WO number with sub task below. Use a text field and
rename it WO#. Put the WO# for all task associated with that WO. This will
allow you to run filters later.
2) Create task just how you described below and make logic ties:
a) mold is made/modified, whatever is needed for particular part

b) mold goes to production where it is filled by crew
c) parts are pulled from mold and sent to finishing
d) finishing patches and cleans up part and prepares for shipping
e) product is shipped

And Also:
) Gypsum - approximately 20-60 minutes per mold to lay the part, and 60

minutes before demolding can occur. Another 30 minutes to demold and prep
the mold for another part. Therefore in a perfect world approx. 4 gypsum
parts could be made in a single mold per day.

2) Paint Grade Cement - same properties and process as gypsum

3) Colored Cement - This process consists of 1-2 hours to lay the part.
This material takes 10-12 hours before demolding can begin. 30 minutes to
demold and prep for next part. When not running two shifts, this process
yields me one part per mold per day.

FYI - You can cut, paste and modify these task for future WO's.
3. Assign resources as needed. You can have more than one resource per task,
but it's better to have one task per resource.
4) Assign a resource calendar to each resource.
5) Set your resource max units under View>Resource Sheet.
6) You will have to put a Start No Earlier Than constrant date on the first
task of each WO until it starts or you can put logic ties to other WO's task.
7) If there is a mold that will be needed on two WO's you'll need to make a
logic tie between them.
8) Set a time to get updates on a regular basis. Twice a week is not to
often for me.
All of this completed you will be able to know lead times and ship dates by
WO.
Good Luck with your job!