The production department must prepare and execute schedules for production and maintenance.
Production Schedule
The company must have a process of preparing comprehensive production schedule, which should specify what should be produced when, i. e. Quantity and specifications of items and dates of production.
• This schedule must be based on the sales forecast or urgent sales requirement.
• Each lot taken up for production can be given a job or batch number and identified by that number then onwards.
• The production schedule is central to the company’s manufacturing activity. All other activities get direction from it.
• The production schedule must be prepared well in advance and must be shared with the other departments to ensure alignment and agreement from all. If any department has any reservations regarding a particular item in the production schedule, it must be communicated and corrective measures must be taken.
• The scheduling process must ensure prioritization of production requirements, depending upon the urgency of the requirement. If any one input (Man, machine, material) is not available and the production of some items needs to be stopped, then the production schedule’s priority must specify which items must be produced on a priority basis.
• Each input departments (Man, Machine, Material) must prepare their own schedules so as to ensure availability of the inputs to fulfill the production schedule requirement.
• The master schedule must be followed by department wise schedule, prepared by the respective departments.
• There must be a regular frequency of preparing and releasing the production schedule.
• The schedule must be monitored and revised daily for all jobs running currently, if there are any changes in the priorities or in any other variable.
Maintenance Schedule
Each machine, equipment or ancillaries must be regularly maintained to prevent an untimely breakdown.
• Regular cleaning, replacement of consumables, realignment, calibration etc. ensure continued smoother operations for the next production cycle.
• Maintenance must follow a check-list method for checking and maintaining of each of the equipment.
• A timetable of maintenance activity must be prepared and followed.
• The maintenance schedule should be woven into the operations such that it is done during the idle time. If the machines are operational 24×7, then special preventive maintenance must be carried out as per guidelines from the machine suppliers.
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