On the Machine Load page, so far you didn't have a chance to see whether the brown (scheduled) and red (full) days on a machine contain orders that will be late.

Now a small violet sign with a white exclamation mark tells you at first sight if you are in danger of running an order too late. There are two kinds of situation that this icon warns you about:

Orders Scheduled Late on a Machine
The violet icon tells you that there are orders threatening to be late on the machine in question and thus won't be delivered in time if nothing is done about them. When you click the icon the dialog displaying the day's orders opens, and orders scheduled late are marked by a red due date so you can easily find them to mend the situation.

Machine Load Is Too High to Produce Unscheduled Order in Time
The violet icon is also displayed when the machine load is higher than the machine capacity on that day (red background) and there is no chance to put the surplus load on any previous day, either, because the capacity on earlier days is insufficient. Therefore one or several unscheduled orders pre-planned on this machine can't be produced in time to meet their due date.

However, if you click the icon expecting to find the unscheduled late orders highlighted in the day details as well you might be disappointed: Unscheduled orders are not marked in red (except when their due date has passed) because the system can't predict which of them you will schedule on time using the available capacity on earlier days.

In the TGV Machine Load machines often appear to be fully loaded because Planning has decided to produce similar orders together even though their due dates lie still far ahead, i.e. if those orders were scheduled according to their due date instead of their format the machine would have some free capacity left. Now the TGV Machine Load helps you find this hidden capacity.

The tool looks for orders that are scheduled earlier than required by their due date. It then displays the machine load situation as if those orders were scheduled in time to meet their due date but not earlier than necessary. The potentially free working hours per day appear as small white figures in the summary bar of each machine that indicates the machine load status.

Like this it shows where you can create free capacity by moving those early orders. So if e.g. you have to decide whether a rush order can be inserted into the existing schedule the tool makes it easier for you to find a day to squeeze it in.

You can switch on this functionality in the new section "Find Free Capacity" in the Machine Load Toolbox. If you click "Move Orders" you will see the number of potentially free working hours of each scheduled day displayed in the summary line of each machine. In the day details you can then look up the orders that could be moved to insert more urgent orders.

Take a look at the new feature at http://demo.pctopp.com.

The blue and green (or red) machine capacity figures from the TGV plus the total number of sheets per day now appear on the right side of the date headers of Conversion Machine Scheduling.

The background color of the date headers indicates the machine load for the day in question (further details in Improved TGV Machine Load). The white figures on a blue background show the machines total working hours for that day. The figures in the green fields display the working hours available on that machine for that day. When their background turns red the machine is overloaded. Additionally, the third number gives you the total number of sheets on that day.

In some plants, there are lots of orders with due dates in the distant past that must stay in PC-Topp because they cannot be produced for one reason or another, but will definitely be produced at a later date. PC-Topp treats those orders as overdue and very urgent, although in fact they are dormant until someone decides to put them into production. As a result, they distort the figures in the TGV machine load.

The right way to avoid this would be to assign realistic due dates - in the future - to those orders. This however is not done in many places, for various reasons.

Now PC-Topp offers a way to keep those orders out of the TGV machine load:

When activated, this feature keeps those orders out of the machine load if they are marked as "blocked" either by Planning or by Sales, and either only for orders with due dates in the past, or for all such orders. (By default, the setting is inactive; all orders appear in the TVG.)

Any user with PC-Topp.NET administrator rights can invoke the feature from the TGV screen: A link in the toolbox on the left of the page leads to a configuration page.

The TGV Machine Load has been redesigned and now offers more information that is up to date at all times.

Automatic Update after Every Change

Expandable View, Order Display, New Features

Rather than showing an overwhelming amount of data, the TGV now shows a compact view with one line per machine. This bar is divided into color coded segments which indicate the machine's load status:

Brown	shows the date up to which the machine is scheduled. New!
Red	shows the date until which the machine is fully loaded.
Orange	shows the date until which the load is very critical (less than one production day of free capacity).
Yellow	shows the date until which the load is critical (less than two production days of free capacity).

(On the Conversion Machine Scheduling page the machine load status is also visualized with the help of the same colors: There they appear in the order schedule's date separators.)

One click on the machine bar opens the detail view for that machine with day to day capacity figures (in hours). A click on a specific day opens a window showing the orders that make up the load on that day.

Similar machines can be grouped so that the TGV shows not just the load on each machine, but also the combined capacity and load for the group of machines.

Moreover, the corrugator is now an integrated part of the TGV Machine Load display.