ERP can be a valuable tool for communication. People throughout the enterprise use common language and understand each other. Money is always related to the financial statements. Backlog is always related to sales orders on the books.
Scheduling is an important part of that communication system because every customer order has a due date. All the material components will be on hand as needed, and the production centers all have capacity to produce the order on time.
At least that is how it should work.
I once worked at a contract manufacturer who managed to break most of the rules. An order from a customer was booked and a job set up and scheduled to match the sales order required date. This company began as a sheet metal former and still had the mentality that keeping the brakes running all the time was always a best practice so, if there was brake capacity, the job would be rescheduled for an immediate start with a scheduled start well ahead of the sales order requirement.
Then the work moved to welding for the next operations. But there might not be capacity at that operation. Management would agonize over the extreme load at welding and authorize overtime. No one seemed to look at the possibility of rescheduling subsequent operations to fit welding capacity. Rescheduling a job was not the way they worked.
About now purchasing would get into the conversation. All required materials could be on hand based on the first schedule. Now that the job had been rescheduled for the brakes, many components showed late to the schedule and the buyers were bombarded with pull in suggestions they could not accomplish. They could have rescheduled around material availability too. But the reply from top management was, “Tell those suppliers they have to meet our schedule.”
At any moment there were hundreds of orders in the backlog and thousands of open operations to schedule. Just like in any schedule, not every operation finished on time for any number of common and valid reasons. When a job fell behind schedule it was never rescheduled to fit reality. Leaving it past due on the schedule was a reminder to all operations that this job had to be done first.
Better-run manufacturers understand that if an operation was not completed yesterday it should be moved to a time when it can be completed. If a material component won’t arrive until Thursday, work cannot be scheduled until Friday when it can be received, inspected, and moved to the work center.
Maintaining a schedule is difficult and an ongoing task that does not always bring good news. But, if it presents reality and the best possible work, it is a communication tool to be used by the enterprise. It can also be confidently shared beyond the enterprise. Wouldn’t most customers rather know as soon as possible if their order was going to be late and have confidence it would arrive definitely on a rescheduled promise date?