New Display Units

Work in progress has got two new display units (ready for viewing on http://demo.pctopp.com).

• 1000 m²
• New: hours (h) - the hours of work time made up by the orders in the storage area
• m³
• sheets
• pallets
• New: floor space (m²) - the area taken up by the palletized orders in the storage area

The units serve the following purposes:

	Display Unit	Comments
Unit	1000 m²	This is the most reasonable unit for displaying Corrugator outflow.
Calc.	sheet length * sheet width * no. of sheets
Use for	Corrugator
New Unit	Hours of work time (h)	Hours of work time waiting in intermediate storage is an interesting value to watch for each individual machine: You may want to avoid values that are too low as these machines risk running out of work if there is downtime in the upstream processes. Excessively high values must also be avoided to keep work in progress low. Therefore, it is possible to set both high and low warning levels for these values.
Calc.	run time (minus breaks) + setup time
Use for	Individual conversion machines
Unit	m³	m³ is probably the most useful indicator for the total work in progress waiting in front of a group of machines. To help maintain a low level of work in progress high warning levels can be set here.
Calc.	m² * board thickness
Use for	WIP (work in progress for the machines grouped in WIP)
Unit	Sheets	Sheets can also be used for the WIP group if you want to display the group's overall work in progress in single sheets (as opposed to m³). Here, too, high warning levels can be set.
Calc.	(no. of sheets)
Use for	WIP
Unit	Pallets	The unit "Pallets" is of interest regarding the conveyor to the strapping machine. It mirrors the inflow of goods from conversion in terms of a Shipping specific unit and allows estimating the work load waiting to be palletized. High warning levels make sense for Pallets, too, whereas there is no need for low warnings.
Calc.	no. of sheets / no. of sheets per pallet
Use for	Conveyor to the strapping machine
New Unit	Floor space (m²)	This unit may not be exactly suitable for the capacity of the storage holding semi-finished goods, but it might make sense to use it for the Finished Goods area. Note that the calculation does not take into account that forklift trucks can store several pallets on top of each other. Thus, this value is possibly only suitable for conveyor systems. In forklift operated environments, use m³ instead. Setting high warning levels for this area prevents the Finished Goods area from being crowded by too many pallets waiting to be shipped. Low warnings are superfluous.
Calc.	no. of pallets * sheet width * sheet length
Use for	Finished Goods

New Order Display

Order information can be accessed with a mouse click on a figure now like in Conversion Machine Scheduling and the TGV Machine Load. So now the user can check peaks of work in progress to see which orders can be re-scheduled to reduce work in progress. If one of the figures in a machine row is clicked a popup box displays the orders making up the work in progress for that machine at the selected point of time. The popup header shows the machine code the production date of the orders in the list the point of time reflected by the figure that was clicked, i. e. the point of time when the stock reached its maximum or minimum level (depending on the stock type selected) totals of the quantity in 1000 m² and m³, the work time and the number of pallets of all orders in the list All orders in the list that are not marked with a grey background can either be re-scheduled to a later production time on the preceding machine or run earlier than planned on the machine in question. (Orders with a grey background have already arrived in front of the machine and thus cannot be re-scheduled any more.) Like this, it has become significantly easier to systematically decrease peaks in work in progress.