Imagine this: Before every car trip, you pull out a road map, look at the possible routes to your destination, and choose one based on a hunch. In the end, you find yourself stuck in traffic and can’t get around it.
These days, hardly anyone plans their trips that way. People use online services or navigation systems that handle the planning based on your preferences and adjust your route—even before you get stuck in traffic.
So what does this have to do with skill-based planning? In many companies, production orders are still planned semi-automatically or even manually. The production order comes in and is broken down into the necessary work steps. The work steps are then assigned to the appropriate workstations—perhaps still using a planning board. At this stage, questions such as “Is the workstation already staffed?” or “Are there any issues at the workstations?” must already have been answered.
Skill-based planning solves all these problems. In this approach, the work steps for the item to be produced are defined once. Initially, these work steps are no longer directly linked to a workstation. This is because not only do employees need specific skills to use a particular workstation, but work steps also have requirements regarding the “skills” that the workstation must provide.
When you start planning a production order in this skill-based world, a planning algorithm—similar to a navigation system—performs the following steps:
- The algorithm analyzes the work tasks to determine the skills required for them
- Based on these skills, he identifies all potential job openings
- He now assigns the work steps according to their order, the availability of workstations, and the availability of staff
The result is a fully automated production order—your route through the manufacturing process.
Would you like to learn more about skill-based scheduling in Flux MES?
Please feel free to contact us
info@flux-mes.de
