eFactoryPro Wiki

5.2 How do I create and edit Scheduling Containers/Periods in the Control Center?

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Steps in the screenshots correspond to the numbers in the headings.

Before getting into the scheduling portion, you must have scheduling containers and periods built for you to be able to to drop the tasks into.  Keep in mind that the Planner will be dropping tasks into the weekly scheduling bucket, to then be confirmed with the customer team.  At that point, the work can be further scheduled into a daily calendar by the Supervisor.

As  part of the Work Execution Management (WEM) Philosophy, Planner/Scheduler are to maintain ready backlogs that support fully loaded weekly schedules.  The weekly schedule for upcoming week should be fully loaded to 100% of available crew labor hours, facilitate weekly scheduling meeting and utilize reusable job plans.

The first part of this process is to create scheduling containers which house the scheduling periods.  This is done in the Control Center.

1. From the Navigation Pane in the Work Module, click on the Control Center.

2. Select Scheduling Periods.

eFactoryPro - Control Center — Mozilla Firefox

3. The Scheduling Container Screen loads.  

4. On the left, you will see a listing of all Current / Future and Past Scheduling Containers.

In our example, we need containers through the end of 2022.  The existing day is 7/14/2022, so we are going to create containers for Mid July 2022 thru the end of the year.

*** We have intentionally titled the container "2020" vs. 2022 so that we can edit it in steps 17 on.

5. To start the process, click on the +icon.

6. Enter a name for the Scheduling Period Container.  This can be up to 50 Characters long.

  • It is up to you as to the amount of time you want to the Scheduling Container to cover.  
  • It cannot be longer than 13 months, but you can easily create a container for an entire year. 
    • For this example, we are going to create a container for the remaining part of the year for 2002/

7. The period length defaults to 7 days.  As a best practice, we recommend that you keep the length at 7 days. Users will NOT be able to put a period at ONE day.

If your plant runs M-F, you may think it would be beneficial to enter 5 day periods. However, this is how the periods would generate:

  1. M - F
  2. SA - W
  3. TH - M

You can see that this would not work the way you intended it to.

8. Enter the Start Date for the Period.  You must pick the date from the Calendar and hit SET to save the date.

There are some built-in validations:  

  • Age:  A user can't pick a date in the past, or 13 months before the last "End Date" of any period in this container (existing or about to be created).
  • Overlap: A user can't pick a start date between the dates on any other "Scheduling Container", and can't pick a start date between the dates of any "Scheduling Period" within THIS "Scheduling Container".

After the initial creation of scheduling periods in a container, you can't change the number of days in a period for the container or make gaps, you can only extend how far out the container covers with more scheduling periods.

9. Enter the final "End Date" for the last period of the Scheduling Container.  Begin by clicking the calendar next to the end date.

9.1. Click the drop-down arrow next to the month.

9.2. Choose the appropriate year.

9.3. Choose the month from that year.

9.4. The calendar for that month comes up.  Select that date.

9.5. Click Set.

10. The end date is populated.  This activates the Generate Periods button.

11. Click the Generate Periods Button.

12. A confirmation message tells you that the periods have been successfully generated.

13. The periods are now displayed in a list by Start and End Date.

If, for some reason, you needed to change/delete a period, you can click on the icon next to the end date that looks like a minus sign in a circle.  Keep in mind that all the same rules will apply (no overlaps, etc.)

14. Click the SAVE button.  

User MUST click SAVE at this point to keep the Scheduling Container.  If you move from this screen WITHOUT saving you will lose your work.

15. A confirmation message tells you that the Scheduling Container has been created.

16. The Container Name is added to the list on the left.  

Editing a Scheduling Period

In our example, we need to change the year from 2020 to 2022.  In the steps below we are going to delete the periods starting in October on, so this should say through September, 2022.

17. Begin the process by highlighting the line on the left.  This moves the container into the Edit mode.

18. Change the name to indicate the proper periods that the new container will show.

19. The SAVE button becomes active. Click that.

20. The confirmation message tells you that the container has been updated.

21. The name on the left changes, and the container remains in Edit Mode.

Deleting a Scheduling Period from a Scheduling Container.  If it is not already in edit mode, highlight the line to move the container into edit mode as shown in the screenshot above.

We now are going to delete out all the scheduling periods from October 2nd on.

22. Only periods in the future are available to be deleted. They will have the X icon next to them.

23. Delete the Scheduling Period by selecting the X icon.

eFactoryPro - Control Center - Google Chrome

24. Periods that are going to be removed will show with a line through them.

25. To save this change select the SAVE button.

26. User will get a confirmation message that the Scheduling Container was successfully saved.

Snagit Editor - [Nov 11, 2021 12:26:30 PM]

Adding a Scheduling Period into a Scheduling Container.

27. Highlight the line to select the Scheduling Container that you wish to add a Scheduling Period to.

In this case we will add back the periods for the month of October.  

28. If necessary, change the Container Name to show the changes.

eFactoryPro - Control Center - Google Chrome

29. First select from the drop down how many days long the period should be.

30. Enter the Start date of the periods.

31. Enter the End date of the periods.

32. Once the dates are set, select Generate Periods.

33. The user will then get a confirmation message that the periods were generated.

34. Click the SAVE button.

35. Another confirmation message will appear that the Scheduling Container was saved.

36. If the user tried to enter a start or an end date that overlaps a current date in a scheduling period they will see the following error.

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