Scheduling is about choosing the order that jobs get done specifically, that's the
sequence that resources get allocated to the creation or delivery of a product or service
but how do we choose and how is it so different in different types of operations?
Hi there, I'm Laurence Gartside management trainer and consultant in business operations management.
Check out my courses over at rowtonstraining.com.
Back to the scheduling, scheduling is a core part of almost every industry's operations.
A car factory has to make customized cars for customer orders, a restaurant has to cook the
meals ordered, a customer service help desk has to respond to loads of customer email questions,
an ambulance has to choose which emergency to go to next, an uber app has to decide which customer
to pick up next and a hairdresser has to choose which customer's hair to cut next. The scheduling
for some of these seems obvious but what's curious is how different the obvious answers can be
from each other and what rules we use when things stop being so easy. Hairdresser is quite obvious,
how does the hairdresser choose whose hair to cut next? Easy, first come first served or
they have a booked appointment system which fill up also on a first come first serve basis.
It's easy everyone understands the system it's fair and customers can't get angry.
To the hairdresser, finishing one customer's hair is just as good as another they all pay basically
the same easy. Scheduling optimized for fairness and simplicity, this is probably usually the same
in the restaurant if your table orders first, you expect to get your food first but sometimes you
don't. You see that other table over there that you know you ordered just before, they've just
got their meal before you! Outrage, maybe you've got a tardy waiter or the chef doesn't like you
but also maybe the chef was just making a puff pastry beef pie for an earlier customer,
saw that the other table had just ordered beef pies too and he thought he'll make a batch at the
same time. So breaking the default scheduling rule of first come first served kind of makes sense.
But now his scheduling rules have got a bit more complex, what was initially just scheduling rules
for fairness and simplicity now incorporates a bit of output maximization as is partially
accommodating for batching and changeovers. How about an ambulance sounds kind of obvious again
there's an emergency call, the ambulance is waiting so it goes but what if it's already on its
way to one emergency and another call comes in. Well okay then, if that new one is more serious
then I think we all understand that it makes sense for the dispatcher to divert it and leave the
first emergency waiting for someone else to take care of. What if the ambulance has already arrived
at the first emergency, already started that job and then the second more urgent call comes in. Can
you pack up and leave them? That gets real tricky, typically I think if an ambulance has arrived and
is administering emergency care to someone then they won't leave and go to a new more urgent job,
it's tougher. The dispatcher literally has to make scheduling decisions that save life and risk death
but this isn't done on how they feel along with highly experienced medical assessments using the
available information they will be working to a very strict defined set of scheduling rules
of how to allocate resources and in what order. So maybe, we have to be very careful about when
to commit our resources to a job in case, a more urgent, more important,
more profitable job comes up. A helicopter ambulance certainly has to make this big
scheduling decision. Normal emergency calls are always coming in and the waiting helicopter,
if you're in part of the world where you're extraordinarily lucky enough to have one,
the waiting helicopter could get to any of them the fastest but it won't even proper
medical emergencies it will just wait until a very specific type of emergency comes up.
Typically, only serious trauma emergencies in very difficult to reach places where a normal ambulance
would be much much slower, using the helicopter is really expensive and again if it goes to some
normal emergency and then a special emergency comes up, well then, we're stuck so scheduling
decisions with a resource-like ambulances where you are balancing life and death with money
and the possibility of another more serious emergency coming up are really difficult
operations management, resource allocation and scheduling decisions, take away the life and death
and this is absolutely the same kind of scheduling decisions that an Operations Manager has to make
in a factory. Do we set up the special machine to run a quite big custom order now? But then if
something another order that's more urgent or more profitable if that job crops up
do we stop and create a big chunk of lost change over time or make the new job wait
and risk the money and customer satisfaction loss there instead?
Not easy, as another example equipment scheduling is another big decision for Operations Managers in
a commercial bakery. The big factory-like bakeries baking tens of thousands of baked goods a day for
supermarkets etc. Here, the orders are probably very very stable customers don't ring 9-1-1 and
say they need an emergency 10,000 cinnamon rolls! Well, actually they probably do but the factory
Operations Manager says no because he knows the stability of his schedule is so important but
it still needs a schedule and decisions made about the rules on how to create it. Their big
trade-off is between batch size, freshness and lead time. It would be super efficient
to make all the whole grain organic bread for the month in one epic mega batch but after three days
it would be stale and unsellable, the supermarkets and the customers would all like all the bread
baked freshly every hour but that would cause a ludicrous loss of capacity from the changeovers.
So here, the scheduling rules are based off an entirely different set of factors. Every day, you
sit down at your desk and make yourself a little to do list and then you decide what to do first,
you are scheduling yourself. Do you always do the oldest task first? First in first out?
Maybe the shortest job first, you know tick something easy off to feel good and get the most
jobs done in the short term perhaps whatever your boss reminded you about yesterday or what that
angry customer was shouting about late last night maybe it's the task that will have the most
benefit to your company in the long term or maybe what's best for your own career in the long term.
There are really a lot of ways Operations Managers can choose the sequences of jobs according to a
whole set of different objectives and they can have a hugely important impact on the overall
performance on output, profit delivery, and customer satisfaction. So even in the simplest
of situations you are always making scheduling choices to optimize for an outcome maybe that's
ease, simplicity and transparent fairness with a first in first out system first come first served
perhaps it's to get the most jobs completed in the short term by always doing the shortest ones
first, maybe to maximize output in the medium term by minimizing changeovers or maybe by
which customer shouts the loudest. Don't know which scheduling rules you are using? Well,
just be careful because if you aren't scheduling to any rules chances are you, you're not optimized
for anything. So how do you set your scheduling and job sequence singles?
What are your optimized form? Do you know any of the techniques and heuristics to achieve it?
How youtube sequences what videos it shows to people is one of the greatest secrets of the
internet but clicking buttons of thumbs, bells and subscribe is a big part of it! So if you
could help the course I'd be delighted and if you want to learn more about Operations Management,
Supply Chain, Logistics, Inventory, Performance Improvement. Watch my next video or check out my
library of courses on my site rowtonsstraining.com Right then, where are my trousers?