Using APS to Backward Schedule

The Scheduling activity generates an intelligent and accurate schedule that makes efficient use of your resources. The Scheduling activity schedules forward in time, simulating the load that actually flows through your shop floor.

To optimize the resource usage in this manner, the Scheduling activity must see all the simultaneous demands for the resources; therefore, you must run it independently of the APS Planning activity. As such, it does not support "real-time" scheduling of new demands.

If you are more interested in quick and more real-time scheduling than in resource optimization, you may consider using the backward scheduling capabilities of the APS Planning activity. APS produces a simple backward schedule to generate planned orders. With the Use Planning Output for Scheduling field (see “Use Planning Output for Scheduling” for more information), you can use this planning data for your schedule. In this situation, scheduling is done simultaneously with planning and you can observe the real-time effects on the usual scheduling output forms and reports.

Note: Using this method to generate your schedule may leave your resources idle when there is work for them to perform. For the optimum utilization of your resources, we recommend you run the Scheduling activity instead of using this method.

Generating the Schedule

To generate the full schedule, run APS Planning. The planning results are loaded automatically into the database tables used by the Scheduling output forms and reports. In addition, the job operation start and end dates calculated by APS Planning are displayed on the Job Operations form.

To update the schedule for incremental changes to the plan (such as for the addition of new orders, jobs, and Get ATP/CTP plans), open the Update Schedule form. Click the Update Schedule button to load the incremental plan changes into the Scheduling output forms and reports.

Note: The system updates this incremental plan data in the Scheduling forms and reports automatically the next time you run APS Planning. Use the Update Schedule form only if you need to see this plan data between runs of APS Planning.

Viewing Scheduling Output

After running APS Planning, you can view scheduling output on several forms and reports, including: Resource/Resource Group Dispatch List reports, Resource Utilization, Resource Group Utilization, Resource Schedule, Resource Group Schedule, Resource Sequencing, Resource Group Sequencing, and Resource Gantt Chart – Scheduler forms.