Reasons for the low usage of scheduling software and the difference in production performance between users and nonusers of scheduling software from a lean manufacturing perspective

It is more important than ever for printers to improve efficiency and productivity, and the means for doing so are available. Computer-assisted scheduling is one method that is claimed to increase throughput speed and reduce costs, among other benefits. Recently, scheduling applications have started to increase in popularity, and many management information systems (MISs) have built-in scheduling features. However, only 15% of the companies that own scheduling software utilize it. The first part of this research project seeks to determine the reasons for the low usage. Another way to increase efficiency is through Lean manufacturing, a strategy for eliminating non-value-added activities, such as defects, excess inventory, and overproduction. Lean manufacturing and computer-assisted scheduling share many of the same objectives. The second part of the research project seeks to determine whether or not there is a difference in production performance between users and nonusers of scheduling software from a lean manufacturing perspective. The analysis is based on data collected through an email questionnaire from 60 commercial printing companies in the U.S. It was found that the surveyed companies who own scheduling software but do not use it, do not rely on the application’s capability because they believe that they can achieve better control with manual scheduling. Furthermore, they believe scheduling software is difficult to integrate with their workflow. Companies who have owned an MIS for 5 years or fewer have a more negative perception about scheduling software compared with those who have owned one for a longer time. In the research, it was also found that companies using scheduling software have higher utilization rates of equipment, shorter lead times for paper storage, and a higher percentage of short makereadies out of the total number of makreadies. Nonusers of scheduling software have shorter throughput time and shorter waiting time for a job between preflighting and platemaking, between platemaking and plate mounting, and between completed printing and the first postpress operation. In general, the scheduling software users in the study are more homogeneous as a group in performance, whereas the nonusers are more diverse in performance, with a relatively high percentage performing at a very low or very high level. The implication of the study is that scheduling software needs to be more userfriendly and easier to customize to increase the flexibility and capability of integrating it into a workflow. Furthermore, companies that own scheduling software, but do not use it, should investigate the possibility of achieving better performance by beginning to use the scheduling application. Scheduling software that is already in house has the capability of enhancing a lean manufacturing effort

Collaborative production planning with BIM – Design, development and evaluation of a Virtual Production Planning system

Construction projects have for a long time been characterized by increased specialization, low productivity, and a fragmented information exchange culture, resulting in inefficient work processes, with time delays and budget overruns. Research within the context of construction planning and scheduling and IT points to improving communication, collaboration, and cooperation to address these problems. However, the focus has been chiefly on production planning processes and scheduling tools and software. Research also points to collaborative user-friendly scheduling systems remaining under-researched; even though collaborative approaches have been introduced, the technological support and implementations are lacking.In this context, this thesis presents a novel collaborative planning and scheduling process and software system, supporting multiple modes of interaction such as individual review, planning, collaborative scheduling and review work in 4D, both co-located and remote. A Design Science Research approach was used to identify requirements that guided the collaborative production planning system\u27s design and development and evaluations. These evaluations show that implementing the collaborative planning and scheduling system enhances understanding of the planning and scheduling of projects and supports both individual and group work. The developed system facilitates information gathering when creating activities and improves collaborative production of the schedule. Furthermore, the new collaborative setting shortens the length of planning workshops while simultaneously increasing the quality output. Thus, the thesis contributes to the body of knowledge of collaborative production planning, collaborative IT systems in construction, how these systems can support communication and collaborative processes in a social context, and how a design science approach could be used in this setting

Group technology: amalgamation with design of organisational structures

Group technology has been studied extensively from an ‘industrial engineering’ perspective (layout, scheduling, workflow, etc.), but less often from an organisational design viewpoint. To study this implication of group technology, the approach of applied systems theory for the design of organisational structures was used as framework for analysis in three empirical cases. To increase the reliability of findings from the analysis of these three empirical cases, five more cases were drawn from archival search. Cluster analysis and product flow analysis were the methods used for forming groups of machines and employees in manufacturing cells, whereas the coding of parts was not employed to this end. Furthermore, the results indicate that the implementation of group technology generally meets shifts in performance requirements caused by competitive pressures, particularly flexibility and responsiveness, albeit the companies considered group technology only when under pressure of ‘poor’ business performance. However, group technology is not always a solution to challenges that companies experience; one empirical case shows that defunctionalisation and scheduling with virtual groups was more beneficial. Nevertheless, when the introduction of group technology is feasible, it also allows firms to consider delegating responsibility for production planning and scheduling to lower levels in the hierarchy and semi-autonomous groups as an alternative to ‘complex’ software applications (a socio-technical approach). Whereas the current study sheds light on the relationship between group technology and design of organisational structures, further research is necessary into the design of these structures and their relationship to group technology

Container-Based Real-Time Scheduling in the Linux Kernel

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in supporting component-based software development of complex real-time embedded systems. Techniques such as machine virtualisation have emerged as interesting mechanisms to enhance the security of these platforms, while real-time scheduling techniques have been proposed to guarantee temporal isolation of different virtualised components sharing the same physical resources. This combination also highlighted criticalities due to overheads introduced by hypervisors, particularly for low-end embedded devices. This led to the need of investigating deeper into solutions based on lightweight virtualisation alternatives, such as containers. In this context, this paper proposes to use a real-time deadline-based scheduling policy built into the Linux kernel to provide temporal scheduling guarantees to different co-located containers. The proposed solution extends the SCHED_DEADLINE scheduling policy to schedule Linux control groups, allowing user threads to be scheduled with fixed priorities inside the control group scheduled by SCHED_DEADLINE. The proposed mechanism can be configured via control groups, and it is compatible with commonly used tools such as LXC, Docker and similar. This solution is compatible with existing hierarchical real-time scheduling analysis, and some experiments demonstrate consistency between theory and practice

Automatic Parameter Configuration for Inventory Management in SAP ERP/APO

Companies today generally hold several thousands SKUs (stock-keeping units) in stock. With an ever increasing trend towards highly customized products, the number of SKUs held by companies is likely to increase even more in the future. For each of the SKUs held in stock, a decision has to be made on how to configure each module of the SKU's inventory system. Doing this for each SKU individually seems to be an unfeasible task, given the large numbers of SKUs held in stock by most companies. Therefore, these companies configure inventory systems not on a SKU-basis but on a group basis, where the groups are usually determined using an ABC/XYZ analysis. The configuration using such a rough group basis for several thousand SKUs does not allow for individually customized inventory systems and therefore might not exploit the implemented inventory methods in a software package in an optimal way. In this research project, decision systems allowing an automated inventory system configuration in SAP ERP and SAP APO at the SKU-level are developed. The SAP ERP corporate software package is the market leader for Enterprise Resource Planning systems, offering a wide range of inventory methods for the relevant inventory system modules. The advanced planning and scheduling system of SAP, Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO), provides additional inventory methods that can be chosen for the configuration in the inventory system modules

Optimizing a Law School’s Course Schedule

[Excerpt] “Just like other educational institutions, law schools must schedule courses by taking into consideration student needs, faculty resources, and logistical support such as classroom size and equipment needs. Course scheduling is an administrative function, typically handled by an Assistant Dean or an Associate Dean, who works with the faculty and the registrar to balance these considerations in advance of the registration process. Usually, the entire academic year is scheduled in advance, although the spring semester may be labeled tentative until registration begins for that semester. It’s hard to imagine, but some schools even publish a two-year schedule of upper-division courses so that students can plan their entire law school career in advance. In order to give assistance to those academics involved for the first time in the scheduling process, this article discusses the law school scheduling process and how a scheduling software package has worked to successfully automate what has been seen as one of the most abysmal administrative tasks of an Associate Dean. We first provide a background to course scheduling at a typical law school. We then present a review of the tools for, and literature on, course scheduling, followed by a discussion of how technology can be applied to course scheduling in general, and our outcomes of applying this technology in a law school environment. We close with a brief summary.