Considerations

Action Rules

In a week in which all scheduled orders have been firmed or open, Master Scheduling will not alter the schedule, but will suggest an action only.  It is assumed in this case that the scheduler has made a decision about the schedule for the week and should have control over any modifications.

If no orders exist for a week, or only planned orders exist, Master Scheduling will actually modify the schedule by adding, modifying, or deleting a planned order.

Master Scheduling will not issue "Expedite" or "Defer" messages.  Use of these messages usually leads to an unmanageable number of messages.  Instead, Master Scheduling groups all orders for a week, and allows the planner to control the scheduling of the orders within that week.

Limiting Reporting by Exception Severity

The schedule can be generated automatically for all parts, but the information printed for the planner's review can be limited to that which is most critical.  The planner may wish to limit reporting to exceptions only, and can request to print on the Action Report only those parts for which exceptions were detected.  Or, the planner may further limit reporting to exceptions against only those schedules which have been firmed.  Of course, the planner may elect to review the schedule of all master scheduled parts each time the final schedule is generated.

Processing and Printing Horizons

The planner may select a horizon date for both the generation of the final schedule and the printing of the Action Report.  Thus, the planner can generate the schedule well into the future, in order to set in motion the procurement of components, but can limit reporting to a smaller time window.  Additionally, the Action Report can be limited to printing only through the week of the last exception.

Quantity Filters

Occasionally, the difference between the tentative and current schedule is small enough that it is not significant to the planner.  The system provides a user-defined quantity filter as a way of suppressing action messages for small schedule changes.  The filter is defined as a percentage, and is compared to the difference between the current and tentative schedule as a percentage of the tentative schedule quantity.  Percentages that are smaller than the quantity filter are ignored.