Not sure how to schedule certain tasks when they are broken up

[Gabrielle]

Hi,

I currently work for a circuit board manufacturer and we are trying to get
the process down for certain circuit boards from one of our customers. The
problem is that out of say 160 boards, we may only be able to manufacture
them in batches of 15 to 20 at a time. I'm not sure how I can divide this up.
Each board goes through various steps where it's loaded with parts from
different areas. But they don't all go through these areas at the same time
and aren't finished and ready for shipment at the same time. I know it sounds
confusing, but any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

-Gabrielle

 

[John]

Hi,

I currently work for a circuit board manufacturer and we are trying to get
the process down for certain circuit boards from one of our customers. The
problem is that out of say 160 boards, we may only be able to manufacture
them in batches of 15 to 20 at a time. I'm not sure how I can divide this up.
Each board goes through various steps where it's loaded with parts from
different areas. But they don't all go through these areas at the same time
and aren't finished and ready for shipment at the same time. I know it sounds
confusing, but any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

-Gabrielle

Gabrielle,
Although Project is an excellent schedule planning tool it tends to lose
power when dealing with the detail variability of production planning.
If you want to use Project in your business, the best advice I can offer
is to schedule the circuit card assemblies (CCA) as batches. In other
words, set up separate tasks for each batch of each CCA part number
(i.e. "Autoload reel #1 for PN 3805671-1, batch #1"). The obvious
problem that first pops up is if board 6 in the batch gets crumped by
the autoloader and has to be scrapped. Now what do you do? I suppose
you could set up separate Project fields for batch quantity,
rework/repair, and scrap and use custom field formulas to keep track of
quantity and quality metrics. Or what if some of the batches have to be
loaded short due to a problem in the material chain? Now a separate
manual load step needs to be added when the part(s) become available.

There is a myriad of issues in a production environment that can quickly
swamp Project. In my opinion, Project is much better suited for schedule
planning of single (or limited) goal type projects like CCA design,
software development, scheduling a banquet, building a house, etc.
Project is much less useful in a production environment. However, maybe
someone else has an alternate view and/or suggestions.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[Gabrielle]

Thanks. I'll see what my boss and I can do. Do you have a recommendation of
another program that would be suitable for this line of work?

 

[John]

Thanks. I'll see what my boss and I can do. Do you have a recommendation of
another program that would be suitable for this line of work?

Gabrielle,
Maybe I shouldn't have been so negative. Normally I'm the kind of guy
that likes to think outside the box for unique ways to get things done.
My company used the Material Requirements Planning (MRP) software to
control production although I must admit, I never did like that system -
too large, complex and not very flexible in my opinion. And one of my
co-workers who was more intimately involved with production planning
once said that he felt he could do a better job (than MRP) on a desktop
PC running Excel.

I don't have any specific recommendations for production planning
application software but questions similar to yours have been posted
previously on this newsgroup. Why not try a search using the keyword
"production". I found 20 posts since Jan of 2004. I didn't read them but
there seems to be some good discussions that may prove helpful to you.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP