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 "earlies" 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.

Historically, PC-Topp would either calculate the duration of an order by itself - based on conversion machine parameters - or the user could tell the system how long he estimated the duration of the order from start to end. Of course, that duration could also be received from the host system in the Order Data Transfer.

While this seemed sufficient for planning purposes, this approach had the disadvantage that the set-up time was always based on machine parameters even for orders with a manually given duration. This made it impossible to compare the actual set-up time to the target time for such orders where the set-up was more difficult than for a normal order.

Therefore, it is now possible to specify also the set-up time for an order, either manually or in the Order Data Transfer.
This opens the following options for the calculation of the total duration of an order.

Set-up time calculated Based on number of colors and die-cut or not		Run time calculated Based on machine's average speed
Set-up time given By host or manually	Run speed given (Indirectly based on total duration)

Obviously, the run speed does not appear in the order data or in the data transfer; it is specified indirectly by giving the total run time to maintain compatibility with earlier versions of the order data transfer.

This means that instead of sending a set-up time of 27 minutes and a speed of 5000 / h, the host must calculate the run duration based on the quantity (e.g. 10000) and give PC-Topp the result for the total time (0'27 + 2'00 = 2'27).

Future improvements are planned: In a future version PC-Topp will be able to use a given set-up time and speed per article, or base the entire calculation on past experience with previous orders for that article.

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.

Each order in PC-Topp has a due date. An order is considered on time when it is ready for delivery on that date.

So far, that was the case if the order was finished on the last machine at any time on the given production day. However, in most plants the production day ends at the end of night shift, in the morning of the following date: Thus, an order was still 'on time' when in fact it could be delivered only the day after the Due Date.

This has been changed: We can set an installation parameter that specifies a more realistic time by which the order must be finished on its due date, for example 5 p.m. (Please contact us to make that change on your system!)

Specifying a Finishing Time for Individual Orders

Independently, it is now also possible to send a finishing time for individual orders in the Order Data Transfer. PC-Topp will use that time as the target time, and will signal that an order is late if that time is not met by its schedule.

So far, orders in PC-Topp.NET could be viewed by customer name, board grade, conversion machine, and article number. Now the scope of order views has been extended by two further pages:

The "Orders by Stereo" and the "Orders by Forme" page show all orders with a specific stereo or tool at a time, listed by due date. If you ask yourself whether there are other orders using the same tool or stereo as a given order, just click on the corresponding link and you'll see all past, current and future orders using that same tool or stereo.

In plants where drawings are available for stereos and / or formes, a little icon appears in front of the stereo / forme code in the toolbox. When active (=red), a click on that icon displays the drawing.

The functionality for flagging orders in brown (e.g. to mark them as printed) used to be limited to the classical Conversion Machine Scheduling program. Now it is available in the PC-Topp.NET Order Summary as well.

In the left column of the Order Summary’s machine routing there is a new check mark icon whose color indicates if the order is flagged on the machine in question:

•    A brown check mark means that the order is flagged on this machine.
•    A grey check mark means it is not flagged on this machine.

You don’t have to start classical Conversion Machine Scheduling any more to switch the flagging on and off. You can now conveniently do so by simply clicking the check mark icon.

The display of flagged orders in PC-Topp.NET Conversion Machine Scheduling with the check mark icon in front of the order number remains unchanged. Just the check icon now is brown instead of black.

Clicking on the customer name, a machine code or any of the other links in an order takes you to a page showing orders e.g. by customer or by machine. However, it used to be hard to find the order you clicked on on that page - it could be hidden from view, or it could be necessary to page forward or backward to get it on the screen at all.

PC-Topp.NET now offers new functionality to make navigating between different order views much easier: When you click on a link in an order, the page that appears will always show the order you clicked on, usually near the top of the page, and the order will be marked by a small black arrow on the left so you can spot it as soon as the page opens.

Not only does this new feature make your work with PC-Topp.NET more comfortable but it also lets you navigate back and forth from one order view to the next and back again rapidly and with ease. No more loss of orientation while browsing the different order views, no more tedious searching for the original order in a new context.

This works in any page, whether it shows a list of orders or just the summary of one order.

But where are the drawings?

In more and more plants, drawings are available for the article, the print specification or the forme, and a click on, for example, the Stereo Number brought up that drawing. Now, that same link takes you to a page showing all orders using that stereo.

The drawing is now accessed by clicking the little icon to the left of that link, usually a tiny PDF icon. If a drawing is available, then the icon is active (=red) and clicking on it will bring up the desired drawing. When it is inactive (greyed out), then no drawing is available.

The Program Memory page marks schedules containing orders that require special scores with a little red icon ( , see Orders with Special Scores Marked in Program Memory).

The same functionality has now been added to the Corrugator Scheduling page. There the red icon now shows you the board grades and dates containing orders with special scores so you can check those orders in detail.

In the pop-up that appears when you click on a date, the orders with special scores are marked in the same way so you can easily locate them.

Among your customers there are always some who are especially important and whose orders have to be treated preferentially. So far it was difficult to locate those orders in Corrugator Scheduling to check which of them you have to produce next.

Now the Corrugator Scheduling page lets you effortlessly find your important customers' orders with the help of the new Find Customer feature.
The green magnifying glass icon in the Toolbox shows you where to look for the new functionality. Select the flute type you want to search and enter a customer name in the search box next to the green icon or select a name from the popup list just like e.g. in the machine search in Conversion Machine Scheduling.
As soon as you have confirmed your selection the customer is highlighted:

• In the head of the Toolbox the name of the selected customer starts flashing to indicate which customer is currently active.
• In the board grade list the grades containing orders of the selected customer are highlighted by a green background.
• In the corrugator schedule the days when orders for the said customer are scheduled to be run appear with a green background as well.
• When you click those days to view their order details you find this customers orders marked by a green background, too.

No more tedious manual searching for a customers orders - with a few clicks you can spot them right away. For a better overview you can hide all board grades except those containing orders of the customer you want to view by clicking the Toolbox link "Green Grades Only". And a click on "Clear Customer" cancels the highlighting and sets the interface back to normal.