Blog
Insights on production scheduling, lean manufacturing, and manufacturing software from 35+ years of industry experience.
Everything we have published.
Featured Guides
What a Plan Built on Yesterday's Data Costs You
A schedule is only as current as its last data refresh. What goes wrong when that refresh depends on someone remembering, what an automatic sync changes, and the limits worth knowing before you trust it.
The Furnace Does Not Care How Many Hours Are Left
Batch equipment takes one job per chamber per day whatever the clock says. Scheduling it as pooled hours over-promises the constraint by a factor you can calculate.
How an Adherence Percentage Becomes an Investigation List
A percentage tells you the plan is not being followed and nothing else. The count of operations behind it is a finite work list, and pairing it with attainment tells you which of two problems you have.
Your Changeover Saving Is a Claim Until You Can Point at the Column
A setup matrix can be fully configured and quietly not firing. The Setup Reason column on every scheduled row turns an improvement estimate into something you can audit.
Late vs. Overdue: Two Different Problems, Two Different Fixes
A job whose plan misses the due date and a job whose plan was fine but was not executed look identical on a late list. They need opposite fixes, and EDGEBIC separates them.
The One Product That Is Quietly Wrecking Your Delivery Record
A plant-wide on-time percentage is an average, and averages hide the specific part number doing most of the damage. Intersecting volume with on-time performance finds it in one screen.
What a Job That Will Not Fit Tells You Before You Promise
A backward-scheduled job that cannot make its due date is caught before anything is saved, with the days-late number attached. That timing is the whole value.
What a Rising Backlog Tells You Weeks Before a Job Is Late
Backlog is the queue length in front of a station, and its slope is a leading indicator. Here is the causal chain from a rising number to a late job, and how to measure your own warning lead time.
What Repeated Machine Swaps Tell You About Your Capacity
Every time work gets bailed out of one station onto another, somebody made a capacity judgment. Counted over a quarter, those swaps are the cheapest capacity evidence you own.
What a Blocker Hint Saves You on Every Late Job
Finding late jobs is easy. Working out why each one is late is where the afternoon goes. A hint that routes you to the right next report turns diagnosis from a search into a lookup.
Which One Machine Would Stop Your Shop?
Most plants can name the machine that would hurt and cannot rank the ones that would stop them. Your routings and utilization report already hold the answer.
Which OEE Factor Is Actually Costing You the Most
A single OEE percentage is not actionable, because three independent losses multiply into it. Decomposing it tells you which intervention to fund, and which station is worth improving at all.