VISUAL SCHEDULE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR A MANUFACTURING FACILITY

A computer-based visual schedule management system that provides visual representations of the amount of work scheduled in a manufacturing facility to both enable rapid identification of bottlenecks in the work flow and permit interactive manipulation of job schedules to alleviate conflicts. The user associates realistic images with the work centers of a facility, lays out the work centers on a visual floorplan of the facility to create a graphical shop overview, and instantly refreshes the utilization of each work center in the shop overview. If changes need to be made, the user selects any work center with a pointing device and drills-down to a graphical representation of a production control board to see the details of the jobs that are scheduled for that work center. The user effects changes by simply dragging the job to a new position on the time grid, or by dragging and dropping the job from the production control board of one work center to the production control board of another. Then, by re-displaying the shop overview, the user quickly assesses the impact of the change on the other work centers and can make further changes to the production control boards of the other work centers if necessary. Thus, the work load of an entire manufacturing facility can be visualized and manipulated interactively in a single computer session without the need for paper reports and off-line analysis, promoting more timely decision-making for better productivity.