Schedule production and see what is queuing

A plan has to answer two questions: when will each run start and finish, and does the shop have the hours? The timeline in Production → Manufacturing answers both without a spreadsheet. It is available when Advanced production is set to Multi-level assembly in Settings → General. See Build in layers.

Open the timeline

In Production → Manufacturing, switch View to Timeline view. Orders with a planned start are drawn as bars against the calendar. Orders without one are listed under Unscheduled. A lane of Capacity load shows days where the scheduled hours exceed the capacity, marked as overloaded.

To place an order, open it and set Planned start under Schedule. Leave Duration (hours) blank to use the hours derived from the bill of materials. If the bill of materials states no hours at all, a one-day estimate stands in and the bar is marked as estimated.

Order the queue

The Production queue lists runs in the order the planner reads them.

Drag a run to move it, or drop it on a day to schedule it.
Set the Priority of each run from 1 · Most urgent to 5 · Least urgent.
Sort by priority and due date re-sorts the queue and replaces the order you arranged by dragging.
Schedule at projected start puts the run on the calendar from its projected start. You can move it afterwards.

Projected dates are not a commitment. They move when the queue or the calendar changes, and the queue shows when the projection was taken (Projected as of) with a Refresh button. A run projected to finish after its due date says so. A run that cannot be dated says why: a resource it uses has no weekly hours stated, or it does not fit inside the planning horizon.

If the shop has no weekly hours yet, the queue offers to use a flat figure Monday to Friday, or you set the week in Settings → Production calendar. See Set shop hours, closures and changeovers.

Make one run wait for another

Open an order and find Waits for. Pick a production order to add, and optionally a Wait after, h. The order cannot start until the ones listed finish. The timeline draws a dashed line for what waits, and a solid red line when an order starts too early, with the date it cannot start before. Dates are never moved for you.

Keelvy refuses a link that would make orders wait for each other in a loop. In a multi-level build the waits come from the specification, marked From the specification.

See the load on each resource

Below the timeline, Resources lists each resource with the hours Planned, its Capacity and the Load as a percentage, and names the Bottleneck. Production labor shows everyone on the staff register, weighted by their production share. A resource that holds several things at once shows Holds at once, the most at once and whether it is Within the limit or Over the limit, with the stretch of time and the runs involved. If a limit cannot be checked because an item has no weight or volume, it says which.

A run that takes loads in parallel across identical units shows the loads, rounds, hours per load and elapsed hours in its drawer.

Shift many orders

Select orders and choose Shift dates to move the planned start and deadline by a number of days. Use a negative number to pull them earlier.