JobTime5 Level 1

All of our prior product offerings have now been included into a single product, which is organized in Four Levels which exhibit progressively stronger and more powerful combinations of features.  The structure of the JobTime5 Levels gives clients a chance to choose the Level that is proper for their own needs.  Small companies, for example, do not need advanced scheduling features. They can now add the benefits of simpler finite scheduling to their manufacturing operations, by using one of our lower levels. 

JobTime Level 1 is our basic entry-level system for small manufacturing companies with minimal requirements.  The following list shows the features that are included in JobTime5 Level 1.  Our existing users and prospective clients familiar with our previous product offering, may recognize that the JobTime5 Level 1 version corresponds closely to the features of our previous product named  "SmartSched":  

The primary distinction (and improvement) over our prior "SmartSched product" is that JobTime5-Level1 adds a user-friendly interface to let you enter/edit your basic input data.  Data to define your capacity is added at your implementation start-up and can be maintained as needed thereafter. The capacity data elements include calendars, work centers.  Your demand data customers, routings and work orders, and these data elements change more dynamically.  The user interface lets users easily enter/edit calendars, work centers, routings, and work orders.  You have the option to define customers and inventory items, and link these items to your work orders.  A standard set of reports is provided. Customer-specific reports can be designed by the end-user in the report writer of the user's choice which can access and draw data from JobTime5's database, which is in Microsoft SQL Server.

The user interface of JobTime5  has been crafted to look and feel similar to the layout of Microsoft Outlook.  If you are a user of MS-Outlook for your e-mail, you already know how to use most of JobTime5 :  

Intuitive screens let you maintain work centers, resources, routings, orders, calendars, resources, customers and inventory quickly and efficiently.   Training and interface is a breeze, due to native SQL Server.  Reports are based on Crystal Reports, so that if you have Crystal Reports at your company, you can easily customize JobTime's standard reports.   Many other reporting vehicles, including SQL Server Reporting Services will allow you to create an unlimited number of custom reports.  

The following screen shows the order screen with a grid of detailed operations.  Each operation can be double clicked (in the software, not in this picture), to display a detailed operation screen.

Scheduling Methods in JobTime5

Every version of JobTime5 includes our powerful schedule-engine which we call our SmartSched technology.  The powerful technique of our SmartSched schedule-engine is to schedule all work centers simultaneously, in parallel, in an event-driven progression over time.  Time is advanced event to event, and resources are attached or detached to tasks, as appropriate. Typical events during an operation include task-start, shift-end, next shift-start, and the final task-finish event.  All tasks against all resources are scheduled in parallel. The SmartSched 'resource-based' method gives significant improvements in capacity utilization over the more simplistic and elementary scheduling technique commonly called "job-based" or "job-at-a-time" scheduling. In 'job-based' methods, each job (work order) is scheduled from start to finish, job after job.  

The "job-based" method is far more common, because it is much easier to visualize and also easier write.  However, the 'job-based' method leaves many orphaned or isolated pockets of capacity that are often too small for use by any the tasks of the subsequently scheduled jobs.  Parallel scheduling typically gains 10-15% greater capacity utilization than job-based methods. 

Both methods support a Visual Schedule Board to allow schedulers to 'fine-tune' schedules after the computer has run a new schedule. Parallel-Resource based methods create significantly fewer cases of "orphaned" and holes of un-used capacity on the schedule board. Therefore, the Job-Based schedule methods will also require far many more hours of daily manual scheduling, to fine-tune the tasks on the Schedule Board, to avoid the orphaned holes of unused capacity, to manually arrange an efficient schedule in your bottleneck work centers.  JobTime5 includes the more powerful  method of Parallel-Resource Scheduling, IN EVERY LEVEL of JobTime5.  This technique gives an highly efficient utilization of your plant's bottleneck work centers, without the need for extensive drag & drop Schedule Board manipulations.

Because of superior capacity utilization, JobTime5's Parallel-Resource Scheduling  also achieves better on time performance, because it finds more time to get the same set of jobs done earlier.  Because of JobTime5's event-based architecture, JobTime offers all the flexibility analogous to event-based operating systems (e.g. Unix or Windows), which can detect conditions and take actions accordingly, while many multiple tasks are in process.  In plain English, this means that JobTime5 can easily recognize and accurately model, far more challenging real-world shop-constraints, as compared to the more simplistic "job-based" scheduling methods. 

You will find the more powerful modeling features in the higher levels of JobTime5.  For example, JobTime5 can offer multi-job forward/backward scheduling, based on the principles of "Theory of Constraints" to optimally synchronize order release dates to best time to arrive at a bottleneck work-center.  The greater efficiency of Parallel-Resource scheduling has been proven in many cases by scheduling identical client job sets by both methods. Therefore, the "Parallel-Resource" method, recognized throughout the scheduling world as more powerful than job-based methods, but 'Parallel-Resource" if it offered by Scheduling Vendors, will appear only in a as a higher priced level option, possibly in the most advanced and most expensive product version. 

JobTime5, on the other hand, offers the higher quality "resource-based" SmartSched scheduling engine in all  Levels.  For your interest, we note that JobTime5 also offers  'job-based' method, which is the schedule method used in our JobQuote feature.  

JobTime5 Level 1: Standalone Basic Scheduling

JobTime 5 - Level 1 is our product for very small manufacturing companies.  For very small businesses, we provide the attractive incentive of our "Small Business Discount".   This discount provides a Level 1 system in a ready-to-use package, to run on a single PC.  A number of qualifications apply, including the direct involvement of your company President, and you must be an independent company with no parent or subsidiary corporate relationships. Please contact us if you feel that you qualify for this program.  In this configuration, JobTime5 acts as a standalone program, self-contained inside a single scheduler's PC, where all data is fully maintained manually inside JobTime5, and all scheduling and updates are also managed directly inside JobTime5. 

 

JobTime5 Level 1: JobLink-Excel Import

JobTime 5 - Level 1 also meets the needs of small to medium companies.  To reduce your manual data input, we provide our JobLink-Excel utility program which can import data from our specialized JobTime5 Excel Import Workbook directly into the JobTime5 SQL Server database. The JobLink-Excel utility lets you import work orders from a workbook of Excel sheets, which contains one sheet per data table, such as calendars, work centers, resources, routings, work orders, assembly links, etc.

 

 

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