Autonomous Scheduling and the Process Layers
Inspired by Shigeo Shingo's Lean thinking, this article explains autonomous scheduling and how to remove the 'peels' (losses) from the production process.
I'll start this article with a quote from the Lean guru Shigeo Shingo that is, at the very least, funny:
“When you buy a banana, all you want is the fruit and not the peel. However, you have to pay for the peel just the same. The peel is a loss and the consumer shouldn't pay for that loss.”
Shingo was so obsessed with reducing losses that he can spot them even in things from nature we see every day. That mindset must be a skill every production engineer should seek to develop. And when we talk about planning and scheduling processes, it's no different.In supply chains that are more robust and already adapted to APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling), the production sequencing process can become almost a bureaucratic process for the key-user. It's worth noting we're talking here about companies whose process is extremely structured. For instance, companies that generate several scheduling scenarios with no manual scheduling intervention, where the choice of which scenario to go forward with is decided based on several key indicators.Because this process is so consolidated and standardized, we can configure the APS solution to run a new schedule automatically. However, the frequency of rescheduling is a very company-specific matter, since we're dealing with a trade-off that's very important for the production system: the discussion between responsiveness and rigidity. The sweet spot between these two factors must be very carefully thought through. If we lean toward the very responsive side, where we can change the schedule in the very short term, we run the risk of leaving production with little confidence to plan order execution. If we lean toward the very rigid side, where we reschedule infrequently, we risk leaving the shop floor adrift and failing to adapt the schedule in time. Finding this sweet spot is a broad topic and perhaps the most challenging when implementing an autonomous scheduling solution.Now, once you find the ideal rescheduling cadence, there are several gains. The first (and most obvious) is the time gain for the user to monitor and improve the scheduling process. Second, process standardization is intensified, giving more predictability to production and the support areas. Another gain is the schedule's adaptability to external events and their impacts in a more agile way.All these gains always originate from a restless look at the process. Never forget that we can improve the way we do our activities. Shingo even managed to complain about how nature “produces” bananas, so there are no limits to looking at the losses in our day-to-day work.Did you like it? Tell us which “banana peels” you spotted in your business today.
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