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.