Taylor Scheduler (TS)

Taylor Scheduler gives you the ability to proactively schedule detailed production activities across the whole plant and anticipate resource conflicts, shortages and other problems before they happen. Because the Taylor Scheduler is built on a model of the actual capacity, constraints and processes of your production operation, it ensures that you won’t find yourself unable to meet delivery commitments.

The Taylor Scheduler is a highly intuitive real-time scheduling system that graphically represents your production schedule and allows you to communicate it to everyone involved. You can define all of the variables that affect each step of the production process, interdependencies, sequence requirements and alternatives. The system is designed to be highly interactive while automating complex scheduling functions.

At the heart of the Taylor Scheduler is a heuristics-based engine that systematically evaluates and selects scheduling alternatives based on the business rules you’ve defined. You also have the option of using a powerful genetic algorithm-based optimizer that uses a multi-pass optimization strategy to determine the best sequence of orders at each work center.

The Taylor Scheduler is designed to interoperate with an existing ERP system. An ERP production plan serves as the initial input for a Taylor scheduling model. Likewise, the executable plan generated by the Taylor Scheduler can be fed back to ERP–synchronizng planning and scheduling and ensuring that purchase orders are linked to actual production orders. Through Taylor Q-Operate, the Taylor Scheduler can also be linked to the shop floor to enable dispatch lists to be communicated to operators and real-time status back to the Taylor Scheduler.

Among the key features of the Taylor Scheduler are:

• ‘Drag and drop’ scheduling allowing you to change the sequence and priority of orders by moving schedule blocks on the system’s graphical Gantt chart. You can make the changes you need and see the impact immediately.
• Extremely flexible model-building function that lets you precisely and completely model the way your plant operates. By starting with an accurate model of your production facility, you can greatly improve the quality of the schedule you produce.
• Set-up matrices that allow you to effectively schedule set-ups where duration is dependent on product sequences, attributes like color or material and external variables like temperature.
• A powerful modeling language that enables you to define setup and run times that must be calculated dynamically.

Batch Allocator

Taylor’s Batch Allocator takes the production plan generated by ERP and uses two decision techniques to best match packaging or customer orders to production lots.

Firstly, Batch Allocator allows you to define business rules for how you want to allocate available production among the ‘customers’ in your distribution chain–these rules can be ‘hard’ or ‘soft.’ For example, create a ‘soft’ rule enabling the system to vary the actual quantity of an order by 10 % in a regional warehouse. Or create a ‘hard’ rule specifying that orders from a particular distribution center must be manufactured by a given plant.

Batch Allocator also uses a second decision-making engine that employs genetic algorithms to rapidly evaluate various ways of allocating orders to production lots finding the one that best matches the actual packaging requirements. It rebuilds the ERP production plan by rapidly evaluating numerous alternatives until it finds one that meets your production constraints. If necessary, Batch Allocator recommends the creation of new batches or the deletion of batches planned by ERP.

Key functions of the Batch Allocator include:

• User-defined business rules - Enables you to define the hard and soft rules Batch Allocator uses as it assigns orders to production lots, reflecting the decisions you’ve made about how to run your business.
• ‘What-if’ capability - Allows each user to simulate alternate solutions before selecting the preferred plan. Unit of Measure Conversation - Lets you define unit of measure conversations so you can manage each order in its appropriate unit of measure.
• Multiple responsibility levels - Enables you to assign one of three authority levels (supervisor, planner or simulator) to each user.
• Flexible reporting - Allows you access to the database to define your own reports in addition to those provided.

Capacity Planner

The Taylor Capacity Planner gives you a solution to your capacity management issues at all three levels in a single application. Designed to work with ERP, the Capacity Planner can be easily implemented at whatever planning level you choose. The Capacity Planner takes advantage of the same finite capacity management functionality available in the Taylor Scheduler. This means that you can model and manage actual capacity at every planning level.

The Capacity Planner allows you to identify capacity issues, evaluate alternatives and implement solutions. If you prefer, Capacity Planner can automatically solve many of these problems without your intervention. This allows planners to focus on using their expertise to address other, more pressing issues.

The Taylor Capacity Planner gives you the power and flexibility to manage capacity the way your business demands.

Among the key features of the Capacity Planner are:

• Improving the rough-cut capacity planning process by allowing the additional capacity required to be added to current model (machine capacity, calendars, resources, and so on). The current capacity model reflects, as a starting point, the reality of the production facility.
• Automatically determining a feasible solution to overcapacity situations and leveling the load to existing or planned capacity.
• Assisting the planner to develop a feasible incremental capacity model reflecting potential additional machines, resources and their implementation plans.
• Enabling you to model capacity more intuitively. The Capacity Planner shares many common user interfaces with the Taylor Scheduler which means you have familiar and powerful production modeling capabilities at your fingertips.

Q-Series

Q-Operate is a real-time link between logistics and production. Q-Operate handles all this communication simply and quickly from the plant floor directly to your logistics department (or anyone in your organization with a computer and the necessary access).

Q-Operate is straightforward and easy to use. Its simple design presents all the information an operator needs on a single screen. This screen is a dispatch list of operations in their properly scheduled sequence. With Q-Operate, orders are done when expected. As production is completed or the schedule is changed, Q-Operate communicates with Taylor Scheduler and everyone is updated in real time.

Some key features of Q-Operate are:

• Production Client: Displays dispatch lists for each machine based on the schedule created by the Taylor Scheduler. Machine operators clock in and out at client stations and report actual setup and run times, quantities produced or scrapped, and machine status information. In addition, a transaction list displays all work against a job in the sequence it was processed.
• Supervisor Client: Displays machine status summary, machine summary, employee summary, and reports for selected machines or employees. The Supervisor Client allows the supervisor to edit and approve transactions.
• Building Login Client: Manages transactions for employees to log in and out of the facility.
• Administrator Client: Manages the machine access, employees, titles, job code, machine down code, reports, and reason code tables used by the rest of the Q-Operate system.