Production planners who reschedule work visually often run into the same question: what happens when the production order they want to move has reservations against it? If the output is already reserved for a sales order, moving the order could create a conflict. Graphical Scheduler for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central answers that question in a predictable way. This is a completely free app from Insight Works for Business Central.
Drag and drop uses standard Business Central logic
Graphical Scheduler uses the standard Business Central planning and scheduling logic. When you drag an operation to a new spot on the chart, it is the same as opening that production order and changing the operation’s starting time or ending time. Graphical Scheduler does not apply its own rules on top of that change.
That means you get the same behavior in Graphical Scheduler as you get in standard Business Central. If you know how Business Central responds when you edit an operation’s dates on a production order, you already know how Graphical Scheduler responds when you move it on the chart.
What happens when a reservation causes a conflict
If a reservation would cause a conflict, you get the same reservation error you would get if you changed the production order manually. The drag and drop does not bypass or work around reservations. The planner sees the conflict and decides how to handle it, just as they would when editing the order directly.
What Graphical Scheduler is built for
Graphical Scheduler is the visual layer for manual scheduling. You see all of your production orders on one chart, see whether machines are overloaded, and drag and drop orders to reschedule them. You can double-click an order to open the production order, or zoom to a single document.
It also goes beyond production. Views are available for assembly, project-type jobs, quality inspection assignments, warehouse shipments, and pick assignments, and you can create your own views with any table to visualize and drag and drop that data.
When you need scheduling that manages reservations for you
If you want the system to build the schedule rather than move orders by hand, MxAPS is the automated production scheduling option. MxAPS handles reservations differently. It manages all of your scheduling, whether or not there are reservations against the orders, and produces a schedule you can actually execute on the shop floor, taking into account constraints such as labor, material, and floor space.
For many manufacturers, the choice comes down to how much of the scheduling work they want to do themselves. Graphical Scheduler gives planners full manual control with standard Business Central behavior. MxAPS takes on the scheduling logic itself.
Relevant Tools
Graphical Scheduler is the main tool for this question: a configurable drag-and-drop scheduling chart for production orders, picks, quality inspections, and any other data you choose to visualize.
MxAPS generates an executable production schedule automatically and manages reservations as part of that schedule, for manufacturers who have outgrown manual scheduling.
Shop Floor Insight picks up once the schedule is set, recording labor, consumption, and output on the shop floor so the schedule reflects what actually happened.