Scheduling MCQ Quiz - Objective Question with Answer for Scheduling - Download Free PDF

Explanation:

Scheduling Decisions:

• Scheduling decisions in any business or manufacturing environment involve planning and organizing tasks, resources, and timelines to achieve specific goals. These decisions are critical as they ensure that operations are conducted efficiently, cost-effectively, and on time to meet customer demands. Among the various parameters influencing scheduling decisions, sales forecasting plays the most significant role.

Sales Forecasting:

• Sales forecasting is the process of predicting future sales based on historical data, market trends, and other relevant factors. It is a critical tool for businesses as it provides insights into anticipated demand, enabling organizations to plan resources, inventory, and production schedules accordingly. Accurate sales forecasting ensures that the production aligns with market demand, preventing overproduction or underproduction, which could lead to financial losses or missed opportunities.

Importance of Sales Forecasting in Scheduling Decisions:

• Resource Allocation: Sales forecasting helps businesses allocate resources such as manpower, machinery, and raw materials effectively. By understanding expected sales, companies can schedule operations to ensure that resources are used efficiently without wastage.
• Inventory Management: Accurate forecasting ensures that inventory levels are optimized. Businesses can avoid excess stock, which ties up capital, or stockouts, which lead to lost sales and customer dissatisfaction.
• Production Planning: Forecasted sales data provide a foundation for production schedules. This ensures that products are manufactured in the right quantity at the right time to meet customer demand.
• Cost Optimization: By aligning production schedules with sales forecasts, companies can reduce costs associated with overtime, expedited shipping, and storage of excess inventory.
• Customer Satisfaction: Meeting delivery deadlines and ensuring product availability are critical for maintaining customer trust and satisfaction. Sales forecasting facilitates accurate scheduling, helping businesses achieve these goals.

How Sales Forecasting Influences Scheduling Decisions:

Sales forecasting provides actionable data that serves as a roadmap for scheduling decisions. For example:

• In a manufacturing setup, if sales forecasts predict a spike in demand for a product, production schedules can be adjusted to increase output, ensuring that the demand is met on time.
• In a service-based industry, forecasts indicating increased demand for services can lead to adjustments in workforce schedules, such as hiring temporary staff or extending working hours.
• For seasonal businesses, sales forecasts help prepare for peak seasons by scheduling additional shifts or increasing inventory levels in advance.

Explanation:

Job Shop Scheduling:

• Job shop scheduling involves planning, allocating, and managing resources and tasks to ensure optimal utilization of resources and minimization of waiting times in a production environment.
• This process is critical in manufacturing and service industries where multiple jobs need to be processed on various machines.
• In job shop scheduling, jobs with different processing requirements are assigned to specific machines in a sequence that optimizes resource utilization and minimizes job waiting times.
• The sequence in which jobs are processed can significantly impact overall efficiency and productivity.

Advantages of Optimal Scheduling:

• Maximized resource utilization by ensuring machines and workers are continuously engaged.
• Reduced waiting times for jobs, leading to faster turnaround and improved customer satisfaction.
• Minimized production costs by reducing idle times and improving workflow efficiency.

Disadvantages of Suboptimal Scheduling:

• Increased waiting times and delays, leading to missed deadlines and customer dissatisfaction.
• Underutilization of resources, resulting in higher operational costs.
• Increased complexity in managing and rescheduling tasks, leading to inefficiencies.

Shortest Processing Time (SPT):

• The Shortest Processing Time (SPT) rule is a widely used heuristic in job shop scheduling because it tends to minimize the average waiting time for jobs.
• By processing jobs with shorter durations first, the overall flow of work is smoother, and bottlenecks are reduced, leading to optimal resource utilization.

Why SPT is Optimal:

• The Shortest Processing Time (SPT) rule works effectively because it prioritizes jobs that can be completed quickly, thereby freeing up resources faster for subsequent tasks. This approach reduces the time that jobs spend waiting to be processed, leading to a lower average waiting time and improved resource utilization.

Additional InformationFirst In, First Out (FIFO)

• This scheduling rule processes jobs in the order they arrive, regardless of their processing times. While FIFO is simple to implement and fair in terms of job order, it does not consider the processing time of each job. This can lead to longer waiting times, especially if a job with a long processing time arrives early and blocks subsequent shorter jobs.

Earliest Due Date (EDD)

• This rule prioritizes jobs based on their due dates, with jobs having the earliest due dates scheduled first. Although EDD can be useful in meeting deadlines, it does not necessarily optimize resource utilization or minimize waiting times. Jobs with shorter processing times might still be delayed, leading to inefficiencies.

Longest Processing Time (LPT) first

• This rule schedules jobs with the longest processing times first. While this can sometimes help in balancing the load across machines, it often leads to increased waiting times for shorter jobs. As a result, it is generally less effective in minimizing average waiting times compared to the SPT rule.

Aggregate production planning:

• It is planning in which the general level of employment and output is planned to balance supply and demand for a period of fewer than 18 months.
• It is intermediately ranged capacity planning, used to establish employment levels, output rates, inventory levels, subcontracting and backorders for products that are aggregated.
• It is not specifically focussed on the individual product but deals with products in aggregate.

Aggregate production planning:

• It is planning in which the general level of employment and output is planned to balance supply and demand for a period of fewer than 18 months.
• It is intermediately ranged capacity planning, used to establish employment levels, output rates, inventory levels, subcontracting and backorders for products that are aggregated.
• It is not specifically focussed on the individual product but deals with products in aggregate.

Explanation:

Gant Chart:

• A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule.
• This chart lists the tasks to be performed on the vertical axis, and time intervals on the horizontal axis.
• The width of the horizontal bars in the graph shows the duration of each activity.
• Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project.
• Terminal elements and summary elements constitute the work breakdown structure of the project.
• Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationships between activities.
• Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status using percent-complete shadings and a vertical "TODAY" line.

Milestone chart, pie chart, and bar chart are different types of charts for data representation as per our needs.

Gant chart a type of bar chart is most relevant to illustrate a project schedule.

Concept:

• Gantt charts are mainly used to allocate resources to activities.
• The resources allocated to activities include staff, hardware, and software. Gantt charts are useful for resource planning.
• A Gantt chart is a special type of bar chart where each bar represents an activity. 
• This chart lists the tasks to be performed on the vertical axis, and time intervals on the horizontal axis.
• The bars are drawn along a timeline. The length of each bar is proportional to the duration of time planned for the corresponding activity.
• With the use of this chart, we can check the progress of project with
  • A visual display of the whole project,
  • Timelines and deadlines of all tasks,
  • Relationships and dependencies between the various activities,
  • Project phases

Concept:

• Gantt charts are mainly used to allocate resources to activities.
• The resources allocated to activities include staff, hardware, and software. Gantt charts are useful for resource planning.
• A Gantt chart is a special type of bar chart where each bar represents an activity. 
• This chart lists the tasks to be performed on the vertical axis, and time intervals on the horizontal axis.
• The bars are drawn along a timeline. The length of each bar is proportional to the duration of time planned for the corresponding activity.
• With the use of this chart, we can check the progress of project with
  • A visual display of the whole project,
  • Timelines and deadlines of all tasks,
  • Relationships and dependencies between the various activities,
  • Project phases

According to Johnson’s algorithm sequencing of jobs is

Now,

From this the optimal make span of the shop is 115.

Explanation:

Gant Chart:

• A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule.
• This chart lists the tasks to be performed on the vertical axis, and time intervals on the horizontal axis.
• The width of the horizontal bars in the graph shows the duration of each activity.
• Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project.
• Terminal elements and summary elements constitute the work breakdown structure of the project.
• Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationships between activities.
• Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status using percent-complete shadings and a vertical "TODAY" line.

Milestone chart, pie chart, and bar chart are different types of charts for data representation as per our needs.

Gant chart a type of bar chart is most relevant to illustrate a project schedule.

Solution: 

Scheduling: Scheduling is concerned with preparation of machine loads and fixation of Starting and completion dates for each of the operations. Machines have to be loaded according to their capability of performing the given task and according to their capacity. Thus, the duties include,

• Loading the machines as per their capability and capacity.
•  Determining the start and completion times for each operation.
• To Co-ordinate with sales department regarding delivery schedules.

Explanation:

Gantt charts are mainly used to allocate resources to activities. The resources allocated to activities include staff, hardware, and software. Gantt charts are useful for resource planning and Production schedule.

A Gantt chart is a special type of bar chart where each bar represents an activity. This chart lists the tasks to be performed on the vertical axis, and time intervals on the horizontal axis. The bars are drawn along a timeline. The length of each bar is proportional to the duration of time planned for the corresponding activity.

With the use of this chart, we can check the progress of the project with,

•     A visual display of the whole project,
•     Timelines and deadlines of all tasks,
•     Relationships and dependencies between the various activities,
•     Project phases

On Gantt Chart one can easily view

• ​The start date of the project
• What the project tasks are
• Who is working on each task
• When tasks start and finish
• How long each task will take
• How tasks group together, overlap and link with each other
• The finish date of the project

by SPT rule job sequence is

Total job flow tine = 4 + 9 + 15 +23 + 32 + 42 = 125

Explanation:

Gant Chart:

• A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule.
• This chart lists the tasks to be performed on the vertical axis, and time intervals on the horizontal axis.
• The width of the horizontal bars in the graph shows the duration of each activity.
• Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project.
• Terminal elements and summary elements constitute the work breakdown structure of the project.
• Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationships between activities.
• Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status using percent-complete shadings and a vertical "TODAY" line.

Milestone chart, pie chart, and bar chart are different types of charts for data representation as per our needs.

Gant chart a type of bar chart is most relevant to illustrate a project schedule.

Explanation:

SCHEDULING

Scheduling is defined as the time phase of loading which decides the duration of 1 a certain defined work, as well as the sequence in which the work will be done

Factors Affecting Scheduling

There are multiple factors affecting the scheduling and they are broadly classified into external factors and internal factors.

External factors: The external factors of scheduling are basically concerned with the customers' demand, customers' committed delivery dates and the stock of goods with the dealers and depots/branch offices. The main external factor of scheduling is accuracy in measuring the customers' demand in terms of product-mix, product range and product features and making the products and services accordingly. For the standard product, the customer may not agree to wait. Hence, assured delivery dates and availability of previous stock of the products are important for the organization's market share and salability of the products to the customers.

Internal factors: The internal factors of scheduling are manyfold. The production planning, control and scheduling department must consider internal factors like the finished goods inventory, the processing time of converting the raw material and components into finished products. The department should also consider the availability of the right type material in adequate quantity as required, the trained and skilled manpower suitable for carrying out the machine operation and assignment to the desired level of accuracy and performance. The production planning, control and scheduling activity should ensure the availability of equipments, tools, manufacturing aids and machines with their total capacity and specifications. All these activities have to take place economically and with provision of additional facility as and when required.

Aggregate production planning:

• It is planning in which the general level of employment and output is planned to balance supply and demand for a period of fewer than 18 months.
• It is intermediately ranged capacity planning, used to establish employment levels, output rates, inventory levels, subcontracting and backorders for products that are aggregated.
• It is not specifically focussed on the individual product but deals with products in aggregate.