Background: I come from the world of “Multiple machines per operator” while the company I am at now is “Multiple operators per machine”.
I am trying to wrap my head around why we would have 2 OpDtl’s under the Resources of an Operation.
This is how OpDtl 10 is set up:
And this is OpDtl 20:
For OpDtl 10 (Capability “Form 8x80 Schaumburg”), the capability is tied to the Resource Group of sFORM. sFORM has 4 resources, and they are all configured to use the Resource Group Values for the Rates and Scheduling.
For OpDtl 20 (Resource Group “Form Employees Schaumburg”) there are 6 ‘Resources’, which are also set to use the values from the Resource Group (which has everything set to 0 anyway, so I am not sure what this is doing). All of the Resources are basically blank, except for the Resource Description and Resource Name, as shown here:
I asked the more senior people here why they have it set up this way, as I have never really encountered this type of configuration before. I am using to seeing a single OpDtl under the Resources of an Operation.
I was told that they were told this needed to be done in order to handle Finite Scheduling in our environment. They also stated that the Shop Load Report relies on the 2nd OpDtl in order to be accurate.
That information may or may not be true, which is why I am here. Trying to get a grasp of the situation.
What is a reason for multiple Resources (one for the Machine, one for employees) in an Operation? I would think that setting the operation up to use 2 employees would be the proper way to do things, but again maybe things are different when there are multiple employees running a single machine when compared to a single employee running multiple machines?
Having multiple resources on an operation record means that the Scheduling Engine has to find capacity on BOTH resources SIMULTANEOUSLY in order to fit that operation into the schedule. If the machine is available THIS afternoon but the operator isn’t, the engine won’t schedule it for that time block.
Each OpDtl record serves as a capacity restraint to scheduling.
So, your company is using Capabilities to do their scheduling instead of Resource Groups/Resources. When you see an operation with a Capability, you want to go into Capability Entry to see what is happening behind the scenes.
I am reading this as the “Crew Size” under Resource / Resource Group is strictly for costing, and not for scheduling. Is that accurate? If so, it would make sense as to why there is the Employee Resource Group as well.
@jhecker You are correct. The crew size is for costing, not scheduling. I would, however, zero out the crew size on the machine and add the correct crew size to the employee resource. That way it is clearer for costing. Right now, it’s going to cost a crew size of 4 on the machine and a crew size of 1 on the employee, so you are over costing the labor. By having a separate resource for labor, the scheduling engine will schedule the machine only when an employee is available.
There is a little more to it than that because that is coming from a 1000-foot level, not a detail level.
How would that be over costing the labor? I realize that the wording of my question sounds rude, but I am not meaning it to be, I am genuinely asking how that works. That operation does require a Crew Size of 4. How does having it on the machine differ than if it were on the employee resource group?
It doesn’t really differ on what resource it’s on, just that you shouldn’t have crew size noted on both. You have a crew size of 4 on the machine resource and a crew size of 1 on the person resource. That will add together to be a crew size of 5 total, not 4. This will affect estimated costs.
If there is a people resource and a machine resource on the same operation, I usually use the people resource for the crew size.
Also, if you have standard costing and do a cost roll on the part, the labor will be for 5 people not 4 (same as above).
One other thing is that you have a crew size of 4 on the setup for the machine resource and a crew size of 1 for the people resource. How many people does it take to do the setup for this operation? If it only takes 1 or 2, make sure you reduce these to the correct number. I would put those on the people resource as well.
Okay, so the crew size would basically be the sum of both (Resource Crew, and Employee Crew sizes). That makes sense.
Keeping it consistent. That may be a trick to try to convince people to do that where I work
This is one thing I can comment on in certainty: We use “LAST” Costing, not Standard.
Looking at how they have the “People” resource configured I noticed that the rates are all $0.00
On the Machine side, there are values in there. So, if they were to put all 4 people on the “People” resource, it would throw off the costing quite a bit, as the system thinks that our people come at no charge. So we would either need to fix the rates in the resource or have the crew be on the Machine side of things.
With that being said, it causes me to circle back to the initial question I had: In this situation, is having an Employee resource tied to this operation having any form of a benefit?
Would having the crew of 4 along with the costing all on the machine side still allow for the scheduling engine to do its job of making sure we have the machine available, and the full crew of 4 available?
EDIT: I think the last paragraph has already been answered: Crew Size on the Machine Resource is strictly for costing, not for scheduling. The Employee Resource would need to be used so that Scheduling is handled properly.
EDIT 2: But, if Crew Size only affects costing, where does the Scheduling engine look to know how many crew is needed for an operation?
It would look to the second resource to schedule a person resource. Scheduling uses resources, not crew size to schedule. It’s not easy to schedule people resources in the system. Keep the people resources as generic as possible, otherwise you will end up having to maintain calendars for your people resources. If this operation uses 4 employees and you want to schedule 4 employees, then you wouldn’t list the employee resource group but would list 4 employee resources from that group along with the machine for that operation.
For costing purposes only, you can leave the machine with 4 as a crew size so it will cost properly (that’s where the labor rates are, correct?)
Since you have Advanced Planning & Scheduling, you can also put that in a Capability so all that is required when engineering is assigning the Capability and it will schedule all required resources.
@jkane - That actually sounds like an easier approach that would cause for fewer headaches overall. Which is probably the reason it was never done here…
