Manufacturers are under constant pressure in today’s economy to optimize their production schedules. They must balance the need to produce high-quality products with the need to keep costs low. They must also consider the constraints of their supply chain and the demands of their customers. This can be daunting, particularly for smaller job shops and manufacturers who may not have access to needed resources.

Advanced scheduling software is a tool used to create manufacturing schedules. This software can be used to create more accurate and efficient schedules than those created manually. Advanced scheduling software can be used to create schedules that take into account the specific needs of a manufacturing process and can be used to create schedules that are easier to maintain and update.

Traditionally, advanced scheduling software has been a significant investment that only larger manufacturers have been able to leverage, that is, until now. MxAPS from Insight Works is an advanced planning and scheduling tool perfect for smaller job shops and machine shops looking to optimize their production scheduling.

Sequencing to Optimize Schedules

Take sequencing, for example. MxAPS understands job parameters and will consider priority, setup time, job parameters, and other variables to optimize schedules. Let’s say you have five different jobs. Three of the jobs require minor tooling changes. MxAPS will group the three similar jobs to minimize setup time.

Sequencing also includes running jobs from light to dark or hot to cold.

For some manufacturers, lot splitting is important when operating in a high-volume environment. Let’s say you have an order for 10,000 widgets, and you know you cannot run all of the units on one machine because it will tie up that machine for a week. MxAPS can split the job up in a few different ways, including smaller lots, specific lot quantities, across multiple machines, over several days, or other specified rules.

So, if you want to regularly create realistic production schedules without relying on people to understand all the scheduling details, then you’ll want to look at MxAPS from Insight Works.

To learn more about optimizing production schedules with MxAPS, check out the following video or visit http://JobShopAPS.com.