CNC Scheduling / timeline

Looking for a better way to schedule and organize the CNC work load. What does everybody use? Is there some kind of computer software that will display all of our jobs into a Timeline. Which can be use by both management to track the completion of jobs and by the programmers / operators, Something they can use to help them know what needs to be on the machine next.

How does "CNC" have different scheduling requirements than _ say _ hand assembly?


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Microsoft Project is what I used once upon a time for project scheduling. Several software options out there.

Most folks just use the pen and paper list. Low tech, but pretty robust.

I worked at an automotive OEM for a while. The die shop had a full time guy scheduling machining for each shift. That might have been a bit of overkill.

I do not think there has been software invented for a job shop such as ours,the order of things tend to very by the ring of the phone.Low paying every once in a while customers get bumped off the machine by higher paying regular customers all the time.

We keep our main customers in plastic file holders on the wall.Work is arranged with dates due first in the front or by customers request if a job they have with us becomes "hot" it goes moved to the front,often at a higher fee for breaking in on a set up.
When I am ready to set up on next job we look at our work log that is updated daily and try to knock out the small jobs before big ones are due.
But as i said,in a job shop like ours due dates can change by one phone call.
Its quicker than any program to be able to walk by those file holders and see what work order is in process at a glance.
If my boss is busy or out of the shop I know my next job is the first one in the red work order holder.

We schedule when work will be done according to time bid on a job,one should have a real good idea when parts A and B should come off machine based on the time quoted for them.If I take 12hrs on a 4 hour job which puts me 8hr off on the next job you can bet your butt boss man wants to know WHY.
Our system is not perfect but working for customers that "go down" and NEED thier parts ASP it's as good as it can get.

I work with a group using something called "open project" (google it) which is similar to MS project, but is free.

gangzilla said:

Looking for a better way to schedule and organize the CNC work load. What does everybody use? Is there some kind of computer software that will display all of our jobs into a Timeline. Which can be use by both management to track the completion of jobs and by the programmers / operators, Something they can use to help them know what needs to be on the machine next.

Click to expand...

For your scheduling needs, you may look at the software, Schedlyzer Lite ( Optisol Software: Production scheduling with Excel data ). It is not an application within Excel but it can read input data from an Excel file if the user wants. It does display operations of all jobs on a timeline (on Gantt chart). For each resource (machine or worker), it also displays all operations to be done by the resource on a timeline.

There are several pieces of rather expensive software that do this. They also help with quoting, and tracking quotes won vs lost, and then keeping track of hours spent and money made. Job Boss has been at every industry trade show that I've been to, there are others as well, but I'm not at all familiar with them.

Shop Management Software

Scott, JobBOSS is one of the shop management software for job shops. Others include E2, Hennings Software, M1, VISUAL Jobshop, MISys, Realtrac, ProfitKey, Microsoft Great Plains, etc. All these packages are good information systems for job shops. As you mentioned, they perform a lot of functions for job shops. However, none of these useful information systems is intelligent enough to generate a decent, reliable operational level production schedule that makes sense to shop floor people. Very few users are happy with the scheduling modules of these systems.

I didn't say that it was good, I offered a piece of software as an example. Do you happen to represent a company that manufactures or sells such software?

Hi gangzilla,
Aaaaaaaah, the dreaded schedules,We paid 12000euro for
Seiki systems and guess what, it still cannot read the bosses mind.

bryan_machine said:

I work with a group using something called "open project" (google it) which is similar to MS project, but is free.

Click to expand...

Thanks Bryan! this looks useful to me. Any more free resources for same purpose ?

Just how busy of a shop are you? Some common sense, and an excel spreadsheet can go a long way to smoothing out the ripples and confusion. Beyond that I have no experience.