Using the WIP Scheduler

The WIP Scheduler is a drag-and-drop production schedule board. Each machine or person is a row, time runs left to right, and every bar is one operation of a job. You plan unscheduled jobs onto the board, then adjust by dragging — the board shows working hours, dependencies between operations, and how heavily loaded each department is.

Open it from Work In Progress → Scheduling → Schedule. For the setup your administrator does first (working week, departments, which processes appear), see Setting Up the WIP Scheduler (Administrators).

The concepts in one minute

• Resources — the rows: your machines and people, grouped under expandable department rows. Only resources your administrator has marked as scheduled appear.
• Operations — the bars: each step of a job's recipe (BOM). A job is "unscheduled" until its operations are placed on the board.
• Draft vs committed — planning a job first creates drafts (amber, hatched, labelled (draft)). Drafts aren't part of the real schedule until you press Commit; Cancel throws them away.
• Department buckets — a department row can hold work that's been scheduled to the department but not yet claimed by a specific machine or person.
• Dependencies — arrows linking operations in sequence, with a minimum and preferred gap ("lag"). They're advisory: the board shows violations in red/amber but never moves your events for you.
• Locked events — a locked bar can't be dragged or resized until unlocked.

Finding your way around

The page has two tabs: Schedule (the board) and Scheduled Events (the same events as a filterable list). A status strip above the toolbar reports the result of every action.

On the board, the pinned Resource column is followed by a Details group (Type and Department) — collapse it with the small < button in its header. Each column has a filter row: tick the resources, types or departments you want and the board hides the rest. Your filter choices are remembered on this browser.

Moving through time

• View combo — 12 Hours, 3 Days (default), Week or Month, anchored at now.
• ‹ / › — step back or forward one view at a time. Today centres on now and flashes today's column.
• Go to — jump to any date. Zoom to fit fits everything loaded into view.
• Highlight job — type a job number or customer; the chosen job's bars get a blue halo, its dependency arrows turn solid black, and everything else dims. Clear the box to restore the board.

Dark grey bands are non-working time (nights and weekends) from your site's working week.

Scheduling a job

1. Pick the job

Click Unscheduled in the toolbar — the count shows how many jobs are waiting. The drawer lists each job with its operation count, estimated total time, created and due dates, and Urgent / On hold flags. Jobs that are only partly scheduled show an amber badge like 3/5 ops. Search and sort to find the job, then click Select.

2. Plan it

The Schedule job window shows the job header (the job number links to the order) and one row per operation. Choose a direction:

• Forward (from now) — operations cascade forward from the Start time.
• Backward (to due date) — works back so the job finishes by its due date.
• Balanced (spread across window) — spreads the operations between now and the due date. (Backward and Balanced need a due date.)

Then, per operation:

• Resource — tick one or more machines/people, or use the Department quick button to select the whole department. Leaving it on the department sends the operation to that department's bucket to be claimed later.
• Time (min) — type your own duration to override the estimate; clear it to go back to the estimate.
• Start — type a start to pin that operation in place (the field turns amber); clear it to let the cascade position it again.
• Lag (days) — the gap before the next operation, in days (quarter-day steps); clear for automatic.
• The scissors button splits an operation in half so the parts can run at different times (each part gets its own minutes and start); × merges a part back into the one above.

Start, Finish and the total recalculate live as you edit. If the plan can't meet the due date, an amber banner explains what happened — for example that gaps were automatically reduced toward their minimum, with the shortened lags highlighted — and the Finish value turns red if the job still lands after its due date.

Edit Dependencies lets you add or adjust the links between this job's operations (predecessor → successor, type FS/SS/FF, minimum and preferred lag in hours). Save as defaults promotes the rows to reusable process-pair defaults for future jobs.

3. Draft, then commit

Press Start Planning. The operations appear on the board as amber hatched draft bars and the board scrolls to the first one. Drag them around if you like, then use the toolbar:

• Commit (N) — makes the drafts real scheduled operations.
• Edit — re-opens the planning window over the drafts (if several jobs have drafts, you'll be asked which one).
• Cancel — discards the drafts; the job returns to the Unscheduled panel.

Adjusting the schedule

Drag, resize and save

Drag a bar sideways to move it in time, up or down to another resource, or drag its edges to change the duration. How changes are saved depends on the cog (Scheduler settings) — the default is Manual: edited bars get a dashed blue outline and a Save changes (N) / Discard pair appears in the toolbar. Switch to Auto-save to persist every drag immediately.

Every bar has a progress overlay — drag its handle to record percent complete. At 100% the bar turns solid green.

The right-click menu

Right-click a committed bar for:

• View Job Details — the job popup (double-clicking the bar does the same).
• Toggle completion — flip between 0% and 100% done.
• Edit job schedule… — re-plan the whole job's committed operations in one window (see below).
• Auto-schedule job — re-cascades all of the job's committed operations to honour their dependency lags. Manually adjusted operations are kept in place (you're then offered the choice to overwrite them too).
• Send to department bucket / Assign to resource(s)… — move work between a specific machine and the department's unassigned bucket.
• Remove from this resource / Detach into own event — for bars assigned to several resources: drop one lane, or carve one lane off into an independent event.
• Unschedule operation — takes the operation off the board and returns the job to the Unscheduled panel.
• Lock / Unlock — locked bars show a padlock and can't be dragged or resized.
• Split event — split a bar into segments that can be moved separately.

Editing a whole job at once

Edit job schedule… opens the planning window over the job's committed operations. Move the anchor Start, change direction, adjust times, resources, pins and lags — every unpinned operation re-cascades live. Operations that are split, locked, completed or have no resource are shown read-only with the reason. Press Apply changes to save: changes apply immediately (they are not staged with the board's Save/Discard buttons).

Department buckets

Bold rows are departments. A solid bar on a department row is unclaimed work sitting in the bucket — right-click it and choose Assign to resource(s)… to claim it onto a machine. You can't drop an ordinary event onto a department row; use Send to department bucket instead.

With Department summaries switched on (cog dialog), a collapsed department row also shows read-only hatched mirrors of the events already claimed by its resources — a manager's overview. Expanding the department puts them back on their own lanes.

Reading the board

The capacity heatmap

Row backgrounds tint from white through gold to red according to how heavily booked the row is over the dates currently on screen. White means nothing booked, full gold means about half booked, and red means at or over capacity. Department rows show the whole department's load; machine rows show their own. Capacity is a standard shift (8 hours) per resource per working day.

• The heat always reflects what's on screen — zooming out over a quieter fortnight cools the same rows down. That's the point: "how busy is it right here, right now".
• Only committed work counts — drafts don't tint rows (they get the amber capacity outline instead).
• Work that falls entirely in non-working time (an overnight cure, a weekend run) doesn't count towards the heat, and non-working days don't add capacity.
• Red is the ceiling — 110% and 300% booked look the same. Hovering a row just lightens its tint; it doesn't change meaning.

The Scheduled Events tab

A live list of everything on the board. Filter by job number, process, company, department, resource, date range or status (Draft / Scheduled / In progress / Completed). Click a job number to open Job Details on its Scheduled Operations tab.

The Sched. hours column is editable: typing a new value keeps the start and moves the end, saving through the same Manual/Auto-save mode as the board. Draft and split events must be adjusted on the board instead.

Scheduler settings (the cog)

• Manual vs Auto-save — how drags and resizes are saved (default Manual).
• Department tree mode — group resources under department rows with buckets (default on). Turning it off shows the old flat resource list; unclaimed bucket events are hidden (not lost) until tree mode is back on, and the cog shows a red badge counting them.
• Department summaries — the collapsed-department manager overview (default off).

Common questions

I dragged an event past its dependency arrow and nothing stopped me.
That's by design. Dependency arrows are advisory — violations show as red or amber lines, but the board never moves or blocks events for you. Use Auto-schedule job to re-cascade a job that's drifted out of sequence.

Why is a department row red when its machines look fine?
Unclaimed bucket work counts towards the department's load but sits on the department row, not on any machine lane. Expand the department and look for solid bars on the bold row.

A job disappeared from the board.
If tree mode is off, events waiting in department buckets aren't shown anywhere — check the cog for a red badge, or turn tree mode back on. Cancelled drafts also return their job to the Unscheduled panel.

My changes vanished.
In Manual mode, drags and resizes are held as unsaved (dashed blue outline) until you press Save changes — Discard or a page reload reverts them. Note that Apply changes in the Edit job schedule window saves immediately and separately.

Can I schedule part of a job now and the rest later?
Yes. Plan and commit the operations you're ready for; the job stays in the Unscheduled panel with an amber badge like 3/5 ops until every operation is placed.