Load Levelling

You use this program to analyze the capacity utilization of your work centers.

The program can be accessed from either the Work in Progress or Requirements Planning modules. The window title will reflect either Snapshot - Load Levelling or WIP - Load Levelling, depending on the module from which the program is loaded.

The program can be viewed as a short-term capacity planning tool, enabling you to address and resolve capacity constraints that occur within the manufacturing time fence. It enables you to determine the seriousness of work center overloads and to identify the jobs contributing to the overload.

You can then maintain these jobs and alter the quantity to be made, change the start/finish dates, or move operations within the job by manipulating the queue time, move time or the operation elapsed time. If necessary, the work center capacity can be adjusted to provide for overtime work, a machine breakdown, absenteeism, etc.

Inputs

The Load Levelling program uses various data (specifically the work center capacity calendar) to identify the total available capacity of the work center. These include:

• The queue time of an operation from the work center.
• The number of productive units the operation may use in the work center.

• The move time entered on the operation, or through the move time matrix

  • The load on the work center is caused by the operation's required capacity, which is calculated from the setup, startup, run, and teardown over the batch quantity of the job.
  • The operation start and finish dates are established using the queue time and elapsed times with reference to the work center calendar for non-working days.
  • Move time between operations determines the start date of the next operation from the finish date of the current operation. Move times can be a negative number of days to provide for operation overlapping, but cannot be more negative than this operation's elapsed time.

• The other major input to load leveling is from the Work in Progress jobs. Typically there will always be some past due jobs.

• The dynamic capacity profile table is also used. When load leveling is required and you add, change or delete labor allocations, the WIP capacity profile is automatically updated. You can, however, recreate this file by running the Balance function of the WIP Period End program (enable the Recreate dynamic capacity profile file option) if you want to recalculate the entire WIP capacity profile.

For load leveling to operate successfully, it is essential that job bookings are up to date. Load levelling does not identify available capacity for any day prior to the current date.

The Job Status report can be used (by indicating a range of due dates) to determine the volume of past due jobs.

The Dispatch List can be used to generate a detailed report indicating the outstanding workload for each work center over a specified period of time.

Work Center

Field	Description
Identify Overloads	Select this to identify the overloaded work centers according to your selections in the Options pane. These work centers are displayed when you select the Overloaded work centers only option in the Work Centers listview pane.
Options	Indicate your selection requirements for identifying overloaded work centers.
Date selection	Indicate the range of dates for which you want to identify overloads.
Work center selection	Indicate the range of work centers for which you want to identify overloads.
WIP Branch selection	Indicate the WIP branches for which you want to identify overloads.
Ignore overloads with a % of less than	Specify a percentage factor according to which work center overloads must be ignored.
Include suggested jobs	This takes into account the capacity required for suggested jobs when identifying overloaded work centers (only if the program is accessed from the Requirements Planning module).

Work Centers listview

The listview defaults to displaying all your work centers regardless of your selections in the Options pane, until you select the Overloaded work centers only option.

If accessed from the Work in Progress, you can highlight entries for overloaded work centers in the listview and indicate one of the following from the Exit Capacity Profile window:

Option	Description
Overloaded work centers only	Select this to only view work centers that have been identified as overloaded (this option is enabled only if the program is accessed from the Work in Progress module).
Exclude actioned overloads	This excludes overloaded work centers that have been actioned (this option is enabled only if the program is accessed from the Work in Progress module).
Work center	This indicates the BOM work center.
Description	This indicates the description for the BOM work center.
Date	This indicates the first date on which an overload is detected for the work center.
WIP Branch	This indicates the WIP branch of the current operation or work center. This column is hidden by default. You can reinstate it by using the Field Chooser option from the context-sensitive menu (displayed by right-clicking a header column header in the listview). Select and drag the required column to a position in the listview header.
Actioned	This indicates whether the record in the overload work center table has been actioned.
Overloaded	This indicates whether the work center is overloaded.

Capacity Profile

Field	Description
Include	If accessed from Work in Progress, you can select to include suggested and existing jobs in the capacity profile.
Options
Number of days to view	Indicate the number of days for which you want to display information on the Capacity Profile Graph and in the Capacity Profile listview. You can save your preference against your operator code.
Start at	Indicate the work center date to which you want to navigate to in the Capacity Profile listview and from which you want to display the Capacity Profile graph.
Capacity Calendar	Loads the Capacity Calendar Maintenance program to maintain the daily capacity records for selected work centers. This cannot be selected for subcontract work centers.

Capacity Profile Graph and listview

This displays a graphical representation of the load assigned to a work center (i.e. reserved capacity, free capacity and capacity overloads).

The graph displays the capacity required for each selected working day of the work center. The capacity required is the total actual outstanding capacity per day.

The scale of the graph is based on the normal capacity per day of the work center, where Capacity indicates the capacity entered for that day using the Capacity Calendar Maintenance program.

As each job is created, the operation load is placed on the dynamic capacity profile. Subcontract operations are not included in this table. For each working day, a record is added. The total capacity required per operation is divided by the elapsed time giving the daily capacity required.

As work is performed against an operation, the dynamic capacity profile is immediately updated with the capacity used. As the planned start date of an operation is not necessarily the actual start date, the capacity used is added to the first planned day until the planned capacity and the actual capacity are equal, before adding the second day, etc. If the actual capacity for the operation exceeds the planned, the excess is added to the last day of the operation.

Capacity Pegging

Field	Description
Maintain job	This loads the Job Entry program to maintain the job currently highlighted in the listview.
Job graph	This loads the WIP Job Graph program to view a graphical representation of all operations allocated to the job currently highlighted in the listview.
Query job	This loads the WIP Query program to view details of the job currently highlighted in the listview.
Zoom on operation	This loads the WIP Browse on Labor Allocations program to view details of operation allocations for the job currently highlighted in the listview.
Recalculate	This recalculates the cumulative required for the job.
Job	This indicates the job number.
Operation	This indicates the operation number.
Job status	This indicates the job status.
Priority	This indicates the priority of the job in the range 1 to 99 (where 1 indicates the lowest priority and 99 indicates the highest).
Manual	This indicates whether the job date calculation method is manual (i.e. if the start and delivery dates for the job were entered manually).
Capacity reqd	This indicates the current daily capacity required by the operation.
Cumulative reqd	This indicates the total cumulative capacity required. This is calculated as the cumulative total of the Capacity reqd column.
Planned	This indicates the planned capacity required according to the bill of materials.
Issued	This indicates the total currently issued to the work center for the job.
Productive units	This indicates the number of productive units that the operation may use in the work center.
WIP branch	This indicates the WIP branch defined against the job. This column is hidden by default. You can reinstate it by using the Field Chooser option from the context-sensitive menu (displayed by right-clicking a header column header in the listview). Select and drag the required column to a position in the listview header.
Current WIP branch	This indicates the current WIP branch of the job. This column is hidden by default. You can reinstate it by using the Field Chooser option from the context-sensitive menu (displayed by right-clicking a header column header in the listview). Select and drag the required column to a position in the listview header.
Operation WIP branch	This indicates the WIP branch defined against the operation, which will not change during the processing of a job. This column is hidden by default. You can reinstate it by using the Field Chooser option from the context-sensitive menu (displayed by right-clicking a header column header in the listview). Select and drag the required column to a position in the listview header.

Work Center Information

This pane displays a summary of static information held against the work center, including general information, unit of measure information and productive units information.

Notes and warnings

Prerequisites

• The Load levelling required setup option must be enabled to run this program (Setup Options > Configuration > Manufacturing > Work in Progress).