Production lines - PC -Parallel planning

The Production Lines view provides a comprehensive overview of production operations across all lines. It allows planners to monitor workloads, reschedule operations, identify delays, and optimize line utilization in real-time.

Main Screen Overview

The screen is divided into several main sections:

1. Action Bar – global functions and quick tools.

2. Filters Section – filtering by product, material, customer, etc.

3. Unassigned and Redbox list – operations not yet assigned to a production line.

4. Parallel Planning Area – visualized production queues for each line.

Action Bar

1. Recalculate estimated times

   • Recomputes estimated production times across all lines. Ensures all displayed durations and queue times are up to date.

2. Filters

   • Shows or hides the Filters panel located below the action bar.

3. Refresh data

   • Reloads on-screen data from the database without recalculating values. Useful when another user might have updated the plan.

4. Set Planner

   • Opens the Artificial Planner window, allowing you to launch an automated scheduling algorithm on one or multiple production lines.

     

5. Customize View

   • Opens a dialog for visual settings:

     

     • Zoom: Adjusts the horizontal zoom of the timeline (similar effect as Ctrl + Mouse Wheel).

     • Column Density: Narrows or widens columns to fit more lines into the viewport.

     • Delay High Contrast:

       • Off → delayed operations display with a narrow red stripe on the left side.

       • On → delayed operations are fully filled in red.

       

6. Show Hint

   • Displays the color legend explaining the meaning of each color and symbol used in the plan.

     

7. Add Production Lines

   • Adds additional production lines to the current parallel planning view.

Filters Section

Allows highlighting displayed data by key attributes.

Available filters include:

• Master item

• Production item

• Material

• Outbound delivery

• Customer sold to

• Customer ship to

Additional options:

• Notification and Warning: enables warning visualization for approaching deadlines.

  • Advance notification – when to show early orange notification (e.g., 1 hour before).

  • Advance warning – threshold for highlighting red critical warnings.

• Edit Breaks: toggles editability of planned breaks within queues.

• Material coverage: overlays material availability information directly into the timeline.

Unassigned and Redbox List

The left panel contains operations not yet assigned to a lines.

• Sort by: defines sorting key of unassigned/redbox lists (e.g., by Material Code, Material alternative code, Production Item number or Scheduled finish time). Swith from ascending/descending sorting.

• Chackbox Filters which activates/deactivates selected filters from section above to Unassigned/Redbox lists.

• Grouped: toggles grouping lists by Outbound Delivery and Materials for easier navigation also enabeling assignment of whole deliveries to the lines.

• Redbox: operations with production, planning or material issues.

• Unassigned: operations that are waiting in distribution table and are not yet scheduled.

Operations can be dragged directly into a production queue to assign them.

Production Lines and Queues

Each column represents a production line with its scheduled operations on a time-based timeline.

• The header shows total delay and current queue length.

• The timeline visualizes operations, breaks, and potential warnings.

• Operations can be dragged or reassigned between lines or back to Redbox/Unassigned.

• Hover over an item to display detailed information.

Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts

Tips and Best Practices

• Use Ctrl + Zoom for detailed inspection of short operations.

• Combine multi-region selection to Drag and Drop items from multiple lines at once.

• Regularly run Recalculate estimated times to ensure the plan reflects actual status.

• Use Delay high contrast only for focus on critical delays; it may visually dominate the plan otherwise.

Troubleshooting