Equipment

The Equipment section of the AI Scheduler is the area where all physical equipment relating to the Schedule is stored and maintained.

Equipment can be anything from a production line, to an individual machine through to a small device or tool.

To access the Equipment area, you will need to select the Data Templates menu in the header, select the data template that you wish to edit and then click on the Equipment menu on the left.

If no data templates are listed. Make sure you have chosen a site location by clicking on your profile and choose "Select Location"

Create an Equipment Class

An Equipment Class is a grouping of similar equipment types that can be assigned to operations. It represents the specification of a resource needed to create a product or perform a function, as listed in the Bill of Equipment.

Why use Equipment Classes?

Equipment Classes allow you to group multiple instances of the same equipment type together. During scheduling, the system can then use any suitable instance from that class to complete an operation, rather than being restricted to a single piece of equipment.

Example

A manufacturing facility owns several injection moulding machines of varying sizes. All five 50-tonne machines can produce the same products using identical tooling. Instead of assigning each machine individually to operations, you group them into a single "50t Injection Moulding" Equipment Class. When the Optimiser and Scheduling system processes an order, it automatically selects the most appropriate available 50-tonne machine from that class to fulfil the operation.

To create and update Equipment Classes, click on the Manage Classes icon and Add, Update or Delete:

Create an Equipment

To Create a new piece of Equipment click the + button and enter the Code, Name and Description:

Once a piece of equipment has been created you can then apply a Class to the equipment. Equipment can belong to as many classes as required.

Add Availability

You can also apply Availability Templates to a piece of equipment to give it an Availability or Shift:

When applying an Availability to an Equipment, you need to provide a date range for that shift. A resource can have different shifts at different times, requiring the need to "calendarise" the Availabilities over time.

Add a Downtime Period

Equipment will also likely have Planned Maintenance or Downtimes associated that need to be created to ensure the system does not Schedule Production on that resource while it is out of action.

Click on the + button in the Downtime Period section to add a Downtime: