Settings - General

To access general settings in Schedule, select Settings from the top menu bar, then click the wrench icon as shown below.

The Settings modal will pop up, opened on the General tab. Here you can set the following parameters / characteristics.

Planning Start

This field contains the beginning date and time of your planning period. By default, this is the date and time when you last imported data from your ERP system. You can move it ahead but it cannot be moved behind the Now line.

Planning Horizon

Your can specify here the lookahead period of your Gantt chart, specified in weeks. The default value is 13 weeks. Below, you can how the default setting affects your planning screen.

A longer planning horizon gives you a wider perspective, but, as it involves more data, it will impact the performance of Schedule. Make sure you find the right balance between planning horizon and performance, and try to specify the shortest planning horizon that you may possibly need.

Days Before Planning Start

Enter here the number of days you want to display in your Gantt chart on the left of your planning start line. The default value is 3 days, illustrated by the screenshot below.

It is recommended to keep this period short, as planning is about the future. You may want to remove completed production orders from your plan and focus on the period ahead.

Visualization Horizon

Enter here how many weeks you want to display of your whole Gantt chart. The value must not exceed that in the Planning Horizon field.

Time Unit For Schedule

Select from the dropdown the time unit of measure you wish to use in your Gantt chart. The options are seconds, minutes (the default setting) and hours.

Time Unit For Buffer

Select from the dropdown the time unit of measure you wish to use for your Schedule buffer. The options are seconds, minutes (the default setting), hours and days.

Time Unit For Report

Select from the dropdown the time unit of measure you wish to use in your reports. The options are seconds, minutes (the default setting) and hours.

It is recommended to set the same unit that you chose under Time Unit For Schedule.

Scheduling Mode

You can select here between the default automatic scheduling and manual operation. As Schedule's major benefit lies in automation, it is recommended to leave this setting on Automatic.

Job Strategy

Here you can decide how the scheduling engine should arrange the tasks. There are two basic ways to do this: either going forward in time, i.e. proceeding from left to right in the plan, or starting from a deadline in the future and plan everything backwards in time, i.e. creating the plan from right to left. The first approach is called ASAP (=as soon as possible), the second is known as JIT (=just in time). These are discussed in further details below.

The dropdown here offers four options:

• ASAP (the default and recommended setting) - In this case, the scheduling engine automatically calculates forward in time, starting with the production order (job) that has the highest priority (smallest sequence number), with the first operation (task) in the routing of the production order. It starts from the earliest possible starting date, and assigns the resource that can complete the operation the earliest. The procedure is continued order by order, operation by operation, until the last task of the lowest priority order (the one with the highest sequence number) is reached.
• JIT - When selected, the scheduling engine automatically calculates backwards in time, , starting with the production order (job) that has the highest priority (smallest sequence number), with the first operation (task) in the routing of the production order. It starts from the latest possible end date, and assigns the resource that can complete the operation the latest. The procedure is continued order by order, operation by operation, until the last task of the lowest priority order (the one with the highest sequence number) is reached.

The remaining two options combine the above two approaches. They take advantage of the benefits of the ASAP strategy, but avoid its drawback, namely little work in progress when there is a major bottleneck in your production process.

• ASAP+ - This combined strategy takes the ASAP end date of each production order as the starting point for an additional JIT backward calculation.
• JIT+ - This combined strategy takes the JIT start date of each production order as the starting point for an additional ASAP forward calculation.

This setting determines the scheduling mode globally, for all production orders, but you can also set the scheduling mode for each order individually by right clicking on the order's line in the Gantt chart as shown below.

Resource View Bar Text

Select here what text (if any) to display on the bar of a production order (job) in the Gantt chart when selecting Resource View under Understand/Schedule menu item. There are many options in the dropdown list, with Job Name as the default.

Below, you can see the result of this selection (in this case Job Name = production order and item number) on production order bar.

Job View Bar Text

Select here what text (if any) to display on the bar of a production order (job) in the Gantt chart when selecting Job View under Understand/Schedule menu item. There are many options in the dropdown list, with Resource as the default.

Below, you can see the result of this selection (in this case Resource) on production order bar.

Scheduling Engine

Select here how to run the application's scheduling engine. The dropdown offers two options as shown in the following screenshot.

When making your selection, take into account that a run of the engine always considers the capacity of your resources, the priorities and routings of all production orders, as well as all the time and resource constraints of all the operations.

• Run Directly - This is the default (and recommended) setting. With this selection, as soon as you change any of the above mentioned production related data, the scheduling engine will automatically recalculate your plan.

When you select this mode, the Scheduler button under the Update menu item is inactive.

• Run Triggered - In this case, the scheduling engine will run only if you click the Scheduler button under the Update menu item.

This selection is useful when you have to update a large amount of data during your daily routine.

Critical Sequence Number

The critical sequence number is the closest (to the actual) sequence number that ensures that the production order gets completed on time. Schedule allows it to be calculated in two ways: either directly (i.e. automatically all the time), or triggered.

• Calculate Triggered - This is the default (and recommended) setting. In this case, the critical sequence number is calculated only when you click the corresponding button. To do so, go to your production order and select Set Sequence Number from the right-click menu.

The Set Sequence Number modal will pop up, where you need to press the Get critical sequence number button. The result will be displayed in the table under the buttons.

• Calculate Directly - If you select this option, both the minimum speedup sequence number and the critical sequence number will be calculated automatically, continuously. In this case, the corresponding buttons in the Set Sequence Number modal are inactive as shown below, and the calculation results are displayed in the table.

If you have many production orders, calculating the critical sequence number may take time. Thus, for better performance, the recommended setting is the default Calculate Triggered.

Setup Time Starts

Decide here whether the setup time of a resource for an operation can start before the previous operation is completed, or setting up can only be started after the completion of the predecessor operation. Accordingly, the two options in the dropdown are:

• After Predecessor (the default setting) and
• Independent from Predecessor.

Teardown Time Starts

Decide here whether the successor of an operation can already be started during the teardown time required for the previous operation, or a new operation can only be started once the teardown of the last operation has been completed. Accordingly, the two options in the dropdown are:

• Before Successor (the default setting) and
• Independent from Successor.

Locale

You can pick here the best localization (language) choice for you: British or American English, or German. This will set the time and date formats accordingly, and will show the days in the selected language. The default setting is en-US.

Bar Color In Non-Prod. Times

You can select from this dropdown what color you would like apply on the operation bars for non-productive time periods in your Gantt chart. The options are:

• Gray (the default setting)
• Transparent
• White
• Same as the bar color in productive times
• Calculated color - In this case, Schedule picks a color somewhere between gray and the color of the bar during productive period.

Show Tooltip

This dropdown allows you to decide whether you want to display a tooltip when hovering over a production order or a task, and, if so, with how much delay should this tooltip appear.

Tooltips contain a lot of useful information about production orders and tasks. An example is shown in the screenshot below.

The dropdown offers the following options:

• Immediately
• Slightly delayed (the default setting)
• Severely delayed
• No

Show Fields In Tooltip

Select here whether you would allow lines without data in your tooltips in case the given field has no value in Schedule. The options are:

• Always (the default setting)
• Only When Not Empty

Auto Release Date

Use this dropdown to enable the automatic release date functionality in case you would like to take advantage of it. By default the functionality is disabled.

Buffer Factor

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Use Resource Categories

Select in this dropdown whether you want to add resources not only to resource groups but also resource categories (a concept that is not used in SAP Business One). Applying categories may be useful when you have many resources and you want to get a broader, better overview. By default, the functionality is disabled.

Show KPI In Table

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Use Wildcards In Filter Entries

Decide here whether you allow wildcard characters in filter fields. By default, wildcards are not allowed.