JobTime5 - Level 1: JobLink Excel Import
The typical manufacturing fit for JobTime Level 1 is a discrete or repetitive order-based manufacture, a job shop. JobTime Level 1 will serve any manufacturing company, that is order based and routes its work orders through a series of machines or specific work stations, which are open a given number of hours per day, and might vary by the day of the week.
JobTime Level 1 includes our well known scheduling technologies which we call "SmartSched" and also "SmartBoard".
"SmartSched" is the powerful scheduling method at work in every product level of JobTime. The SmartSched technology schedules operations on work-stations of work centers, according to the work calendar assigned to each work center, and sequences controlled by your choice of a dispatching rule, such as "due-date order". Work Stations (machines, benches, or even generic labor), can be defined as generic and interchangeable Work Stations. In each Work Center, JobTime assumes the work stations are interchangeable and all capable of doing the same work. The ability to name and state constraints between work-stations is provided at a higher level of JobTime5.
JobTime's Level 1 product is a single-constraint scheduling system. Each machine recognizes a standard set of alternate machines, Each operation recognizes setup time, unit production rate, start and end quantity, batch overlap size, and can have multiple shop floor transaction updates per operation.
JobTime's "SmartSched" logic is a finite capacity scheduler. It gives you a choice of 12 standard rules, such as due-date, priority, priority + due-date, slack time, etc. The user can define a custom scheduling rule. You can think of scheduling rules as a "sort order" in which the system will sequence jobs from a waiting queue of orders to be processed at each work center. JobTIme5 - Level 1 offers the best buy price for our "SmartSched" techniques to the small to medium size company that just wants to start with basic scheduling, is just getting started with finite scheduling, and reserves the option to later expand seamlessly into a higher JobTime level with an expanded feature set.
Tasks are scheduled according to your selected dispatch rule, such as due-date, shortest processing time, critical ratio, or merely a priority ranking that you can assign to each work order. You can also pick combination rules, such as Priority first, Due-date second. The scheduling rules are put to use when JobTime's SmartSched logic picks each task to start on each work station, in your chosen priority order. During the schedule, the passage of time is simulated, including a series of events that include task-start, task-finish, shift-start, shift-finish, across all the legal shifts in the calendar, until all the tasks have been scheduled.
During scheduling, the sequence of tasks with in a work order is honored. For example Operation with Sequence Number 10 is processed before Operation Sequence Number 20, and then Sequence Number 30, etc., until all the tasks are scheduled.
JobTime Level 1's powerful "SmartBoard" technology gives you the very best in visual schedule-board perspective of your scheduling plan. The JobTime Schedule Board is like a magnetic schedule board, and it displays your future-looking schedule to visually display the load on each work-station of every work center in your shop. The SmartBoard, shows a visual schedule interface that lets you use the mouse to drag and drop operations, to fine-tune your schedules, which have been first calculated by the SmartSched logic.
JobTime's Level 1 SmartBoard is intended for small to mid-size companies that need basic scheduling, and do not wish to purchase advanced scheduling features they are unlikely to use.
JobLink Excel Utility.
You might prefer to start using JobTime5, by entering and maintaining all data manually. This technique requires the minimum initial investment, and it gives you time to learn all the features in the Level of JobTime5 you have purchased. Typically, manual input creates duplicate data entry of work-order data into two different systems. To reduce the headaches of duplicate data entry, the JobLink-Excel utility program lets you export data from your host system into Excel sheets, use cut and paste to move selected work order data into our JobTime-Excel Import Workbook, and then use the JobLink-Excel import utility program, which moves this data into our JobTime5 SQL database automatically.
The JobLink-Excel utility lets you import work orders from the JobTime Import Excel Workbook, which contains several worksheets, normally one sheet per JobTime5 data table. The sheets include calendars, work centers, resources, routings, work orders, assembly links, etc. The JobLink-Excel utility even lets you show which standard columns you might rearrange in the sheets, to keep all data correctly moving into JobTime5 SQL Database.
You can prepare your input data by using standard Windows cut-and-paste operations, to copy needed data from your host system, into the worksheets of our JobTime5 Excel Import Workbook. If you are an Excel 'Power-User' you might want to write your own VBA procedures and/or Excel Macros, to copy data automatically from Excel output-sheets exported your host system into the JobTime Excel Import Workbook .
JobLink-Excel is an import technique that lets you create a data interface between a host ERP system and JobTime, at a minimum budget. For example, you can export new orders from your host system (ERP/MRP) out to an Excel sheet. Next you simply cut and paste the new orders (and new routings, if needed) into the Work Orders and Routings Work Sheets in our JobTime5 Excel Import Workbook. The JobLink-Excel companion utility will let control which sheets, and even which columns within each sheet, to import into our SQL Server JobTime5 database. Our Excel Import feature can significantly reduce manual effort to get data into JobTime5 from a host system. The Excel Import utility, and the standard JobTime Excel Import Workbook are included help you reduce your input effort at this version of JobTime 5 - Level 1. This JobTime Level1 version can have its database installed on your local server, and you can install an unlimited number of instances of JobTime5 client software on PC's in case you have multiple schedulers. The user interface is intended principally by schedulers, and higher level management. It is not a shop-floor control system. However, the schedule data in the JobTime database can easily be displayed in View-Only reports throughout the company.
SmartSched Benefits
SmartSched improves scheduling in three important ways:
 | Promising Delivery: SmartBoard let's you visualize your machine loading to determine capacity available for "hot" or last-minute jobs. By moving orders you immediately see if a job becomes late if it is pushed into the future. |
| Managing Production: You can see work orders visually through the entire production cycle. You can simultaneously see all other competing orders on the same machines. You can make minor "fine-tuning" adjustments such as trading places between orders, without having to fully re-schedule. |
| What If Analysis: Shift your capacity (over-time or sub-contract) and see late jobs come in on-time. Reflect a machine breakdown and see the impact. Re-schedule maintenance to pick up short-term capacity. See it now, not later. |
Schedule Board Features
For true Drag and Drop capability, JobTime's Schedule "SmartBoard" technology can:
| Zoom In / Zoom Out to view the horizon at the detail you desire |
| Highlight all operations of a given work order |
| Display late orders in red |
| Dynamically re-schedule tasks you move, recognizing working calendar |
| Move impacted tasks on the same machine accurately into the future |
| Display full part or order number by moving the mouse next to a task |
| Display the full operation detailed field dialog by double clicking a task |
| Let you re-arrange machine-center rows and re-size width of the rows |
| Scroll the board horizontally or vertically using true Windows controls |
| Validate moving a task to not violate stream or overlapping operations |
| Validate moving a task to machines not permitted as alternates |
| Validate moving a task to a date prior to the Work Order release date |
![[HRule Image]](images/div.gif){kind=small}