Scheduling Working Periods#

Work Calendars define the normal operating hours for a factory and, for scheduling purposes, define the availability periods where Schedule Scenario Jobs may be sequenced. Calendars affect the availability of Resources, Employees and Durables, imposing up and down times according to working and non-working periods respectively.

For Resources, the Calendar associated with the Resource's Area will determine the availability periods of the Resource: this includes non-working days given at the Calendar level and non-working times specified in the Shift Definition. Any Resource non-working times will be shown in the Scheduling GUI as crossed out periods.

For Employees, the calendar definition stems not only for the Calendar associated with the Employee but also from the shift planning assignation and employee calendar days generated:

• At the Calendar Level, shift definitions can be used to break down a working day into different shifts and to define to each one a team pattern. When Calendar Days are generated, each calendar day is assigned the shifts specified in the shift definition, with a team being associated to each shift according to the Team Pattern.
• At the Employees Level, the employee can be assigned to a Shift Plan, Team, Workgroup and Position. By Generating Shift Plan Calendar Days, for each Day, the Employee is connected to the shift in which his/her team will work.

Non working periods can be easily identified in scheduling by diagonal stripped patterns, as can be seen in the next picture.

The default behavior of the Scheduling engine is to never schedule jobs on non-working times. However, there are two configurations that can change the way non-working periods are handled.

Processing in non Working Time#

The Resource property Can Process in Non-Working Time allows for a Schedule Scenario Job to continue its execution or finish it during non-working periods; however, it still cannot start in a non-working period. This aims to model cases where machines have pre-set switching-off timers, and therefore do not require human intervention to process, for example industrial ovens with switch-off timers. As such, even though one or more non-working periods may be crossed, the Resource is kept operating.

Spanning Jobs Across Working Times#

The Step property Can Span Across Working Times allows for a Schedule Scenario Job to be started during a working period, suspended at the start of a non-working period, and then resumed during the next working period. As such, whenever the Schedule Scenario Job crosses a non-working period, execution is stopped, and is resumed during the next working period.