Product Description

"Even the best companies tend to be reactive because of poor scheduling. Often their employees prefer being reactive because they are so used to operating in this mode. The shoot-from-the-hip approach is very common in American culture. The West was won with a ‘six-shooter’and many shop floor managers continue to function in the shoot-from-the-hip mode. While there are some conditions that might benefit from the shoot-from-the-hip philosophy, modern competitive manufacturing is not one of them." —from Finite Capacity Scheduling In this groundbreaking book, internationally recognized experts explain why obsolete scheduling methodologies may be preventing your company from achieving competitive levels of productivity, and how today’s powerful new finite capacity scheduling (FCS) technologies can transform it into a world-class competitor. The first comprehensive guide to understanding, choosing, implementing, and managing FCS technologies, Finite Capacity Scheduling:

• Exposes the problems inherent to infinite capacity scheduling models
• Explains why FCS is the key to modern competitive manufacturing
• Shows how FCS maximizes resource use and cuts inventory costs
• Proves that FCS is a natural complement to MRP, ERP, TQM, and JIT
• Reviews current and emerging FCS technologies
• Offers guidelines for choosing the best FCS system for your company
• Describes how to integrate FCS seamlessly into your management structure

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1401060 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 251 pages

From the Inside Flap
Peter Drucker has said that time is the new measure of competitive success. Nowhere is the truth of that maxim more evident than in today’s manufacturing sector, in which increasingly shorter product cycles and guaranteed on-time delivery are essential to competitive survival. But, as Gerhard Plenert and Bill Kirchmier show in this groundbreaking book, companies cannot hope to achieve truly competitive levels of productivity as long as they rely upon outmoded scheduling models. The key to overcoming the costly bottlenecks, wasted resources, unpredictability, and customer alienation bred by traditional infinite capacity backward pass (ICBP), and achieving world-class levels of performance, is adopting a finite capacity scheduling system (FCS)—and now this book shows you how. Finite Capacity Scheduling is the first comprehensive guide to understanding FCS and implementing and exploiting today’s powerful new FCS systems. Based upon the authors’experiences modeling and installing more than 200 FCS applications, the book dispels common misconceptions about FCS and clearly explains why, contrary to popular belief, a well-integrated FCS system works as a natural complement to MRP/ERP. More importantly, it provides detailed guidelines for selecting, implementing, and using FCS technologies to help maximize resource use, decrease inventory costs, increase inventory turnover, improve customer service, and significantly enhance organizational communication and coordination. The authors begin with a fascinating exploration of traditional ICBP as a major obstacle to achieving modern levels of productivity, and why and how FCS can all but eliminate problems inherent to ICBP and transform virtually any manufacturing organization into a world-class competitor. This is followed by an in-depth review of major FCS methodologies, including job-based, resource-based, and event-based models, as well as new and emerging approaches, such as genetic algorithms. The remainder of the book is devoted to practical discussions of how to implement, manage, and measure the performance of FCS installations. With the help of numerous case studies and vignettes, the authors show how FCS can be integrated into a modern MRP/ERP system and management structure, and how to bring about the types of cultural changes required to create an effective FCS-enabled organization. A complete guide to achieving world-class productivity, Finite Capacity Scheduling is must reading for distribution and logistics managers, operations managers, and scheduling and planning professionals in all manufacturing industries.

From the Back Cover
"Even the best companies tend to be reactive because of poor scheduling. Often their employees prefer being reactive because they are so used to operating in this mode. The shoot-from-the-hip approach is very common in American culture. The West was won with a ‘six-shooter’and many shop floor managers continue to function in the shoot-from-the-hip mode. While there are some conditions that might benefit from the shoot-from-the-hip philosophy, modern competitive manufacturing is not one of them." —from Finite Capacity Scheduling In this groundbreaking book, internationally recognized experts explain why obsolete scheduling methodologies may be preventing your company from achieving competitive levels of productivity, and how today’s powerful new finite capacity scheduling (FCS) technologies can transform it into a world-class competitor. The first comprehensive guide to understanding, choosing, implementing, and managing FCS technologies, Finite Capacity Scheduling:

• Exposes the problems inherent to infinite capacity scheduling models
• Explains why FCS is the key to modern competitive manufacturing
• Shows how FCS maximizes resource use and cuts inventory costs
• Proves that FCS is a natural complement to MRP, ERP, TQM, and JIT
• Reviews current and emerging FCS technologies
• Offers guidelines for choosing the best FCS system for your company
• Describes how to integrate FCS seamlessly into your management structure

About the Author
GERHARD PLENERT, PhD, has more than twenty-three years of experience in manufacturing scheduling methods, and is the author of four books on production and operations. BILL KIRCHMIER is a consultant and educator in the areas of finite capacity scheduling, industrial engineering, and mechanical engineering. He has more than thirty years of experience in marketing, sales, application and system integration, and production improvement technologies.

Customer Reviews

Finite Capacity Scheduling
Finite Capacity Scheduling provides a management-level explanation of why infinite capacity backward pass scheduling methods used in traditional MRP, MRPII and ERP systems rarely produces feasible shop schedules, resulting in significantly increased WIP and expediting costs. It goes on to describe how finite capacity scheduling methods vary and how they may be integrated with the traditional methods to improve the efficiency of your organization and facilities. It also provides insight on how to choose an appropriate FCS method for your type of operation and managemnet style.

The book is not a technical "How to Manual". It is a introductory manual for top and middle managers to understand why FCS is needed and how it works which is exactly what the authors state in the first and most important step in the implementation of a successufl FCS system: managemnet understanding.

I would recommend the book to everyone who depends on an MRP-based scheduling system for their production schedules and anyone who is considering implementing an FCS in their operations.

Finite Capacity Scheduling: Management, Selection, and Imple
For more than 20 years, I have been looking for someone to easily explain the basic principles and practices of FCS. Here's a book that takes the complexity out of the subject and makes it simple to understand with examples and antedotes that clearly illustrate the subject details. Rarely have I been able to pick up a book on a techical subject and find myself "getting into it" because the style and content is so interesting.

There are few experts on the subject of FCS. Bill Kirchmier and his associate have, both, demonstrated their expertise and writing skill to put across a difficult subject in such easy to understand laymans language.

I commend this book to anyone who has the idea of evaluating and/or implementing Finite Capacity Scheduling as a process for improving their current or future manufactuirng production throughput.

Required Reading
This book was written for manufacturing management at all levels interested in increasing productivity, thus profits. It is non-technical in nature and easily understood by all that will be positively affected by its well constructed contents.

One must remember that MRP was created in the early days by hardware vendors intent upon selling iron. It was an algorithm designed for purchasing material needed for production based upon a nebulous forecast that ran backwards in an infinite mode. To make a point, think about infinity in a backward mode before you go to sleep tonight-go to bed early.

Unfortunately, the computer power at the time was insufficient to solve the real problem on shop floor-planning and scheduling of very finite capacities to consume the material that MRP recommended. The obvious result: bloated inventories.

MRP soon became a creed not to be violated no matter that the better half of the problem of shop floor control was still unsolved by expensive automation.

This book should be made required reading by all manufacturing management staff. The result will be a very pleasant surprise for all involved.