You've heard all the advice. Make sure you turn out the light when a room is empty. Drop the temperature one or two degrees and you'll still be warm. Make sure the faucet is turned off. Close the refrigerator door. And even when warming up the car on a cold winter day, it doesn't have to be that warm.

Production scheduling software can also assist in reducing emissions in a manufacturing facility. The system can let managers know when sections aren't being utilized so machinery, lights, pumps, electrical panels ... even entire sections of a plant can be shut down when it's not being used. This kind of shutdown can be planned by having a scheduling system custom-tailored so equipment that's located together is also scheduled and operated together. Such grouped equipment can be powered and unpowered as a unit more easily.

This goes right back to the energy plant that provides electrical power to your own facility. If you're not drawing the power for some areas of your facility, the electrical plant doesn't have to generate that power. There's a common misconception that electrical energy in the power grids can be generated and stored, then later on being routed to where it's needed. There's no such storage possible with today's technology for that amount of power. Because of this, electrical energy is actually used the exact moment it's generated.

This author has seen the electrical bill for a certain major automotive manufacturing facility. The amount of that bill for one month was $1,000,000.00 ... one million U.S. dollars. If there was a way to shut down parts of that plant on occasion during the month, savings could be quite a bit on that monthly bill. More importantly, the overall carbon footprint of both the manufacturing facility and the plant generating the electricity for the facility would be reduced as well.

In doing your part, we'll all benefit.

So your boss calls you up and says they have to cut costs. He says that your department (you oversee all of the shop floor production) needs to cut back by 20%. Well - tell your secretary she’d better become handy with the good ole computer and the email she can’t seem to figure out because you need to cut your paper cost. Before we go blaming your sweet secretary and all of the paper supplies she goes through let’s look at the shopfloor and see where there are ways to improve.

I’ll take a stab and say that you are using an Excel spreadsheet document and printing it out each morning for each employee to carry around. This is logical because they need to know what their job duties are for the day. Unfortunately, they seem to know how to loose the sheets rather than keep them. In the end at least 50% of the employees will need a second copy of this task sheet and you’ve just skyrocketed your supplies cost for the day.

So have you ever considered purchasing a software system for your scheduling process? Of course not. I’m sure you’re wondering how production scheduling software will help you to reduce costs. Well don’t get me wrong there will be a large start up cost but the ROI will be worth it. You start out with a basic system that allows you to organize your job loads. The system will manage your machinery, materials, tools and even those pesky workers that keep losing their job lists.

Now how to stop them from loosing the sheets? Monitors can be placed around the shop floor so that the employees can see what their duties are at all times. The monitor can also help them know how on track they are and whether they will have the job completed in time. You’re going to save a lot of money with this scheduling software because it’s going to help you when you’re scheduling production hours. You will no longer need to spend four hours a day working on the next day’s schedule because the system will do most of the work for you, especially if you invest in artificial intelligence (AI). The AI will design a complete schedule for you based on the specific functions you desire. That alone should help you save 5% right?

In developing a custom C# GPS application for deployment on Windows Mobile 6.x my mind tends to wander. It wanders and wonders about what else can be accomplished with this same technology that would be useful in other areas.

Logistics as it relates to Warehouse Managment Software is quite a large industry. Barcodes and RFID tags are used within a warehouse to track individual packages within the facility. As these are now largely wireless systems they're exceedingly portable, unlike older wired systems which had to be used in-place as the packages went by. For the moment these systems will remain outside possble GPS use for reasons of accuracy (50-yard variables) and low satelite signal strength inside buildings. GPS tracking transponders are installed on trucks and trailers so the owners and operators can verify where shipments and drivers are at all times.

Only recently have managers realized these operations work best when custom-tailored software is developed to tie all these operations together for complete tracking. Parts, materials and finished products can now be tracked from the beginning of their use in a facility until they get to their final destination at a customer's facility. And all this is accomplished within one software application designed for how the facility operates instead of attempting to change operations and workflows to match how the software operates.

It's important to know where things are, particularly when you're running a business. It's even more important when you own that business. Custom-tailored Warehouse Management Software can certainly assist in this.

So you're starting a new manufacturing business. You have all the money lined up, you've found a decent building that has the room you need for all the equipment arranged with all the right workflows in mind. From one end to the other, the place is going to sparkle and you hope to be able to keep it that way. After a while, workers are hired, equipment is being installed and tested, people are getting trained as to what they're going to be doing ... and as leads start coming through the door, you start creating a schedule on a piece of paper with a pencil.

After a while it gets to be a little too unwieldly so you move the schedule to a spreadsheet where you can drag around the little cells with the mouse cursor, making them bigger or smaller depending on how much information is in there.

Is that really what you want to be doing for the next 20 - 30 years? Figuring out which cell goes where and constantly printing updates for distribution as priority orders come in? Is that what you want any of your workers doing either?

Another issue is the future. Once you do get around to seeing the light and getting some production scheduling software that's custom-tailored for what you do (rather than trying to stuff your schedule into an inflexible canned-n-boxed system), your current schedule at that time will need to somehow be imported into the new system, which will probably take more time than few people have.

Look at your accounting department, with their flatscreens and decent accounting software. Look at your designers with their CAD software, your secretaries and their calendar applications, and your shipping department with their systems that are tied directly to the shipping company.

So, why are you shortchanging your schedulers?

Automating your production scheduling just makes sense. And really, there are custom-tailored systems that can also include all those other functions as well.

You're in charge of scheduling the production at your plant. Or at least you're in charge of the person responsible for scheduling the production at your plant. You have all those nifty spreadsheets you've developed over the years, which have kind of evolved into a manual scheduling system with your brain, or the brain of the person you're in charge of who's responsible for scheduling the production at your plant, as its intelligence. You, or them, can re-organize the schedule with barely a thought when priority issues and projects happen. Moving things around might take an hour or two, and the schedule might be tweaked out a couple days later, but you can do it.

But a spreadsheet is just a computerised version of a piece of painted plywood and a stack of sticky notes for each job. A software version of a whiteboard and some colored markers. A spreadsheet is for financial use, not for scheduling. Are you gaining anything by using it instead of those other physical scheduling "systems"?

Nope, not a thing.

A planning board looks very similar to what you might build in a spreadsheet, complete with colored cells and some basic information in the blocks that represent a job at a certain time on a certain day. But in a planning board, drag one of those tags to a new spot and it "snaps" into place. Double-click it, and more detailed information comes up. Go past it without fulfilling the job and notifications go out. There's a whole host of features that spreadsheet is missing. There are also Gantt chart versions which provide even finer detail in a smaller space, something that spreadsheet can't do.

And what about AI, or artificial intelligence? Let's say you distribute films. A film-grade tape or film negative comes through the door from the studio. The tape has to go to telecine to create a master print. The negative or master print is used to create the 4,000 or so theatrical prints. There's also the digital cinema copies, the IMAX conversion and the smaller prints for the discount houses and the military. You then start the DVD development, along with conversion for online delivery. All this has to be scheduled. A spreadsheet? You're kidding, right? Now, once all that's released, you're in the clear ... until an awards show. Suddenly sales pop through the roof and retailers are demanding more DVDs of that film. You're already into the next few dozen projects. What the hey?

Artificial intelligence in a production scheduling system will allow you to drop that new batch of manufacturing in where it belongs. The schedule is then run through some genetic algorithms until the best scheduling solution is found. The schedule that results will be the one that will get the priority job completed in a timely manner while offsetting the older schedule in as little an obtrusive manner as possible.

Sooner or later you'll want to move away from those spreadsheets to something better. Best to make that choice sooner than later.