Order Pool Introduction

Please read the Basic Concepts section before starting with Order Pool configuration.

What is Order Pool

Order Pool is a component of the 24Flow suite. The Order Pool shows a list of orders as retrieved from the ERP system, and provides the operations manager or planner the means to decide when an order should be released to the shopfloor and hence allows them to control the amount of Work In Progress (WIP) on the shopfloor.

The orders that have not yet been released are ordered chronologically according to the start date. The start date has been determined through backwards scheduling: i.e. 24Flow computes the latest start date on which the order can be started in order to meet the planned delivery date, as explained in more detail below.

Order Pool and the ERP system

The customer’s ERP system contains the basic information that is retrieved and enriched by 24Flow. 24Flow has some flexibility in the sense that, depending on the sophistication of your ERP system, some information may be retrieved from the ERP platform or else can be directly stored and maintained within 24Flow.

24Flow expects to retrieve the following information from the ERP system:

• List of orders.

• Planned delivery date for each of the orders.

• Custom name for each of the orders.

• Product name for each of the orders.

• Quantity (#units) for each of the orders.

Optionally, the ERP can also provide material availability for each of the orders and  routing information, i.e. the sequence of processing steps and their respective duration, for each of the products. In case the routing information is not available in the ERP system, it can be configured and maintained within 24Flow, more on that below.

Concerning the Bill of Labor (ie routing), there are 2 modes of operation for Order Pool, depending on the capabilities and the information available in the ERP system:

1. The production types, processing routes & processing times are maintained within the ERP system. In such a case, 24Flow will take this information, as is, from the ERP system and will use that information together with its knowledge about the Work In Progress (WIP) to compute the start date for a production order.

2. In case the production types, processing routes and processing times are not maintained within the ERP system, this information can be configured and maintained in 24Flow as described below.

If you want to maintain routings in 24Flow, please read the “Configuring production types, operation types and operation type assignments” in the basic concepts section.

Planned start date

24Flow provides automated planning in the sense that it will automatically compute the planned start date for each of the orders. It will do this via backwards scheduling, i.e. 24Flow will compute the latest allowed start date for an order in order to have it delivered in time.

To compute this planning for a particular order, 24Flow makes use of:

• The product type and quantity associated with the order.

• The average processing time for each of the operations for the product type.

• The already scheduled capacity for each of the production steps, based on the Work-in-Progress and all orders that are already in the order pool.

How to configure these parameters in 24Flow Order Pool is explained in more detail below.

Release Lateness

The last concept we need to introduce here is Release Lateness.

Release lateness is an indicator whether production is currently meeting its target delivery dates or is running behind.

Release lateness is computed by comparing the current date with that order in the order pool that has the earliest start date (the most urgent order).