The functionality for recording waste separately by waste reason at the PC Topp Machine Terminal has become a standard PC-Topp.NET feature. (Before, detailed waste entry was supported only in personalized versions of the DOS Machine Terminal.)

Waste at the machine occurs in three distinct locations:

• Before the machine
• During set-up
• During production

Waste entry in the PC-Topp Machine Terminal is done in separate fields to reflect those locations.

Those waste quantities can be further subdivided by defining detailed waste reasons in the PC-Topp Settings. An example would be:

In the Detailed Waste Report, the waste is then shown in detail, along with totals for each location.

If you have already been doing detailed waste entry using the old personalized module, please contact us so we can switch your plant to the new functionality.

A more detailed explanation how to enable and use the detailed waste reasons in PC-Topp.NET can be found here:

Detailed Waste Reasons in PC-Topp.NET

The PC-Topp Corrugator Scheduling page looks a little different now: Next to each grade there appears a percentage plus two new buttons.

A closer look reveals that the percentage equals the trim result of Optimisation, provided the automatically preselected orders are left unchanged. In effect, PC-Topp tells you up front what result Optimisation will show:

	Good results are shown on a green background.
	Bad results appear red.

The primary interest for the planner is that he can concentrate on the difficult grades, i.e. the bad results, from the start. Once those grades are done, the remaining ones will be easy.

In effect, if he wants to, the planner can use the arrow button next to a good result to transfer it to Program Memory without going through Optimisation. And if he is happy with all remaining results, he can transfer them all at once by clicking on the arrow button on the top of the page.

The pre-calculated results use the white must orders and blue optional orders of the days preset for the grade's flute type in the Optimisation Parameters page (in the Settings menu). Manual changes of the preset number of days with blue orders (with the slider) are taken into account by the pre-optimisation. But you have to press the Recalculate button to see how this will affect trim.

Red icons appearing in front of the optimisation result warn you if any of the orders selected for optimisation have been ignored or only partially scheduled.

	The optimisation result will lead to leftover medium priority orders.
	The optimisation result contains partially scheduled low priority orders.

Whenever the orders of a grade change, the pre-optimisation automatically reassesses the situation and displays a new result. In particular, this can mean that - when you use upgrades to solve a problem on one (red) grade, a previously green result will turn red. (Grey results show that PC-Topp is aware that the previously calculated result must change, but a new result hasn't been calculated yet.)

A new PC-Topp report is now available which lets you assess at a glance the quantity of finished goods and waste per order within a given period of time.

The report lists all orders produced within the selected date range and shows

• the number of ordered and scheduled products per order,
• the number of produced sheets vs. good sheets on the corrugator,
• the number of good products per order and machine along with the percentage of waste occurred on this machine,
• the total quantity and waste percentage for each order covering all machines it ran on,
• the totals for the selected time span.

The report allows you to quickly scan all orders produced and pinpoint orders with excessive waste, and then to analyze on what machine the waste occurred.

From the beginning, PC-Topp has been able to show a one-character field next to the due date, the so-called Date Code, to let users know whether the due date was meant as "exactly on that date", or "earliest" or "latest", to name just a few.

In most plants, that feature remained unused, and in plants where the host system did send data in that field only few people, if any, understood the meaning of the letters appearing next to the due dates.

PC-Topp now offers a table in which the meaning of each code in use can be explained. The corresponding note appears in the Order Summary below the due date.

On the Corrugator Scheduling page, the first column in front of today's orders shows programs waiting in Program Memory (usually in 1000 m²) for the corresponding grade. A dark yellow background indicates that those programs already have a starting time and program number, while a lighter background shows new schedules that are not tied and numbered yet.

A click on that field shows details on those schedules, and lets you recall some or all of them. (Of course, care must be taken not to recall schedules where production is imminent or has already started.

When a grade you are about to schedule shows such a number, then recalling the existing schedules and doing optimisation for all orders together will give a better overall result in most cases. After a recall, the pre-calculated result will change after a short time to reflect the changed situation.