Scheduling in Reverse
Both Material Requirements Planning (MRP/MRP-I) and Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRP-II), for example, are forms of backward scheduling systems. You might have encountered those terms in our previous posts, and those are examples of backward scheduling.
Asprova can easily design a backward plan. A Japanese manufacturer of marine fresh water generators for ships experienced Asprova’s assistance on this topic. (See case study 17) It is often hard to understand the importance of coming up with a plan based on deadlines (backward) and practice. But, enough understanding on Asprova can easily help us with this.
Here are five advantages of Backward Scheduling:
- Process change-over reduction– quick changeovers are an integral part of the JIT philosophy. The benefits of quick changeovers can be realised by simply changing the way in which we go about changeovers.
- Inventory reduction, leveling – production leveling, also known as production smoothing or – by its Japanese original term – heijunka is a technique for reducing the muda (waste).
- Reduced scheduling effort -with backward scheduling, you don’t really need to put a lot of effort in the process.
- Increased production efficiency -unlike forward scheduling which schedules into the future, backward scheduling could potentially schedule into the past because the resources where not available to complete the job.
- Accurate delivery date quotes – backwards scheduling then may turn around and actually forward schedule the job to tell the customer the earliest delivery time.