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Intranet application Production Plan

screenshot of intranet application Production Plan

To know the Production Plan is important to workers, who may prepare needed tools in time and arrange their job in suitable way. Production plan database is utilized by some others intranet applications (raw material consumption, calendar).

Even very well prepared production plan is not too much significant, if right workers do not know that. This application does not solve capacity calculation and production planning itself, but other important problem: to inform workers in time about changes in production process.

In screenshot on left there is home page of production plan application. It is some 3-weeks calendar with notation when, which production line and to which product type job change is going to be converted. Day of job change is marked by line step down to prevent overlaying product name and to accent the change. By click on product type name browser is navigated to catalog page of that product type to display that product detail description. There is no navigation in days on this page, always actual week plus two next weeks are displayed.

In the right part of screenshot there is form for production plan setting. Only one production line is possible to set up at once. In upper part of form we can set up job change (date and product name), in lower part of form we can set up notes (date, text of note and duration of validity). Note duration is marked by appropriate length of line below the note text.

Data entry is simple. Click on date in displayed calendar to mark job change date, then pick up the name of product type to which production line is planned to be converted. Only product types, which are possible to run on this production line are offered in input select element. When editing already saved job change event, click on job change (product type name), then correct date by clicking on calendar, or pick up another product name. Similar procedure at edit notes is used. Below the form you can see short help.

Thanks to select element there is not possible to pick up nonexisting product type. New product type must be established by customer service department first. So possible collision in other applications is catched in time. Otherwise it is not possible to enter right data for new production in Production or Quality Reports applications (when product type is unknown).

Originaly for production plan was used Excel table and this was sent to users by email. When we wanted to get some data from this file for using in others aplications, we got into troubles. Closed and proprietaty Office format files means closed or dead data. I know, there are some hacks (ADO, csv, Office objects) you can use, but they are not easy for handling by server scripting and not for general, or automated use.

updated 09.06.2006