Saturation#

In certain situations, it may be desirable to attempt to either concentrate a larger portion of the load onto a certain Resource or, as a side effect of this action, shift load from another Resource if possible; however, this shift should not imply that production order and material due dates are unfulfilled. These cases include, for example, having a Resource with lower reliability, which would process a smaller portion of the work unless its substitutes are overloaded and due dates are in risk; alternatively, having a Resource with greater throughput, it may be desirable to limit its availability so as to safeguard against the arrival of high priority/hot Production Orders or Materials.

Saturation is activated using two Resource properties: Priority and Saturation. Scheduling will then, for each Resource, forecast the level of load that will be placed on it: if it exceeds the level defined in the Saturation property, the load will be distributed between it and other Resources with lower Priority. The level of Saturation can be defined between 0 (default, Resource is always considered Saturated and load will be evenly distributed) and 1 (Resource is never considered Saturated, and will accumulate all the load not taken by higher Priority Resources; in this case, their Saturation will be considered first). Any value between 0 and 1 represents the threshold of the Resource's available time, in decimal, after which it is considered saturated.

Below is shown a case where all the Resources are considered saturated (default case):

Here is another where a single Resource (Laser Trimming Machine - 01) has a Saturation level of 0.8: