Staggered changeovers

Some production lines can have many machines, or some slow machines, and it can take a long time for materials to travel from the beginning to the end of the process.

If there is a changeover from Material A to Material B on a long production line, then it could mean the front of the production line is now producing Material B, while the end of the production line is finishing off the production of Material A. This breaks the Infor MES model because a production line can execute only one production run at a time.

Line A
Cutter	Prewash	Washer	Assembly	Furnace	Sprayer	Palletizer
B	B	B	A	A	A	A

Line groups are the model used to solve this problem. Instead of modeling the production line as one line with many machines, MES models this as multiple lines, each with one or more machines. These are then grouped together as a line group.

Line Group A
Cutter Line	Washer Line		Assembly Line
Cutter	Prewash	Washer	Assembly	Furnace	Sprayer	Palletizer

The decision of which machines to include on each line depends on the process and how long each operation takes.

Each line starts to execute the new production run as the material arrives, meaning the changeovers can be staggered in time as the material progresses through the line:

Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) can be measured at a line group level, because physically a line group is considered a line in most scenarios.