TracManager assigns employees to perform activities in a routing sequence. The SEQ # defines the sequence or routing order for the activity. If the Process Prerequisite is set to completed (CMPLT) then all activities with a lower SEQ # must complete before the activity is scheduled. If the setting is START then the next lower sequence must be started to allow the activity to be scheduled.

If Equipment is required to perform the activity, you must first create the equipment record, then associate the name of the equipment with this activity.

A Post Delay setting would add hours to the end of the activity completion. For example, if the activity were to apply varnish and there would be a number of hours drying time required before the next activity should be scheduled.

Predecessors provide an ability to force an activity to wait for another activity to be completed before being scheduled. This feature is normally not used and should only be used if there is a specific scheduling necessity.

Minimum employee assignments provide a means to provide the required number of employees scheduled at the same time. For example, if a delivery requires two people

Maximum employee assignments provide a limit to the number of employees assigned to an activity at the same time. For example, if there were ten employees qualified to Assemble and you only wanted a maximum of four assigned.

Non-constraining checkbox tells the scheduler to ignore all hours budgeted for the activity. This is applicable for activities such as “Supervision” or other non-process activity.

Keep Together checkbox tells the scheduler to always use the same resource once the activity is assigned. For example, if the labor budget included 24 hours a drafting and there were three qualified drafters – rather than assigning each drafter eight hours on one day, the scheduler would assign the hours to the same drafter for three days.

3. Employees

Holidays and planned absences are considered when the Scheduler is scheduling work. Set all holidays and planned absences before scheduling jobs.

4. Job Labor Budgets

The Scheduler will only schedule jobs that have labor budgeted. Labor budgets may be imported with the Cabinet Vision job, imported via a spreadsheet, entered using a previously saved template or built line-by-line manually. In addition to the labor hours budgeted, the Scheduler will consider the hours already completed as well as the estimated hours to complete (ETC) entries that may have been processed.

5. Employee Skills

Every activity that will be scheduled must have one or more qualified employees associated with the activity.

For each employee, select the activities on the left panel and then click Add to add to the employee list.  Add only activities that you want the selected employee to perform.

Set Priority.  The numeric value on the left of the activity indicates the preference priority. Zero is the most preferred priority. For example, when the Scheduler is searching for an employee to assign to an activity, it will look for the lowest Priority number first. To set the priority right-click on the activity listed for the employee. You may have multiple priorities of the same value.

Profile

You may create a named profile that has a starting and ending date. This will allow a temporary qualification period which is helpful when you hire temporary employees.

The default settings on the Rules and Settings page are typically set correctly for most applications.

Unscheduled Time. The Scheduler can assign unscheduled time to a specific job. This way the employee is scheduled for an entire workday even though they may not be working on production jobs for the entire day. You may want to use the “unscheduled” time for some other non-production special project.

Auto Optimization We recommend the “Attempt to complete every job as early as possible” setting. This causes the schedule to be as efficient as possible. In the event you want to delay the start of a job, you may do so on the main “Jobs” tab. If you choose to “Start later to finish near scheduled due date” the scheduler will likely create a schedule that under-utilizes the available resources. For example, an employee may be scheduled to work less than the number of hours that they will be present (and paid). It is better to keep everyone fully busy in the near term if possible.

7. Resource Availability

The Scheduler will create a calendar of the available hours per employee. These hours are initially based on the employee work schedules (when they come in and go home).

Click Create to begin the creation of the availability calendar

The Override availability Schedule menu is accessed by clicking the Create button drop-down arrow.

Use this feature to override the normal availability calendar. For example, you may want to have the Cabinet Shop work group work for four hours on Saturday during April. You can do that by setting up the form as follows:

Then click Apply

The Display Selection allow you to change the view of the Resource Availability as desired.

Using the Scheduling Feature