A lot of manufacturing companies today still use a whiteboard or spreadsheet of some kind as a production scheduling system. Scheduling managers for those companies know their products. They know the processes which go into those products. They know the production standards necessary to convert certain raw materials into those products using those processes. And they know the people who run those processes and what they’re capable of.

One famous architect worked on a certain cathedral project for the bulk of its over-100-year construction. As each stone was hand-carved, and as the vertical construction continued, the building became somewhat out-of-alignment with what was the current drawings, possibly beginning with a change of only 1/8 of an inch near the bottom of a spire. This architect would then redraw the entire building from scratch to incorporate these unintended changes to the actual construction.

In most situations, managing production scheduling using a whiteboard or spreadsheet can be as overwhelming as this architect’s approach to his work. Downtime occurs on machines intermittently across the production floor. Schedules subsequently slip. Or a rush order comes in and everything currently scheduled on various machines or within a given department will need to be pushed back.

When an event such as one of these occurs, scheduled items need to be at least adjusted. Entire projects may need to be pushed back in the production schedule entirely. It gets to the point where it’s a full-time job, if it isn’t one already.

Automating the production scheduling of a manufacturing facility will likely become a necessity, especially if a facility or company grows as time goes on. Choosing an appropriate production scheduling system for a given business and business culture can be difficult but it will be much-appreciated in the future.