Patent ID: 7925365
Filing Date: 2011-04-12
Classification: G06Q,Y02P

Abstract:
1. A method of assessing a sufficiency of a plurality of work centers for processing a plurality of jobs during a time interval, each work center having a group of machines for performing an operation, each job having a job priority and including one or more operations to be performed upon a set of items associated with the job, the items of the set being like items, each machine having a preference level for processing the items associated with each job, said preference level being one of a range of machine preference levels, the method comprising: determining which jobs of said plurality of jobs have an operation that is associated with a work center having an available machine whose preference level for processing the items associated with the job matches a current machine preference level, said current machine preference level having been selected from said range of machine preference levels in decreasing preference order, said determining resulting in a set of candidate jobs; selecting a highest priority job from said set of candidate jobs, said selecting resulting in a selected job, the items associated with said selected job being referred to as selected items; at each work center associated with an operation of the selected job, allocating one or more machines having either said current machine preference level or a lower machine preference level in respect of the selected items to process a chosen number of units of the selected items, said allocating of machines being performed in decreasing order of machine preference level in respect of the selected items; prior to said allocating: outputting a rough-cut capacity plan indicative of said allocating, wherein the machine preference level of each machine for processing the items associated with a job is dependent upon the items to be processed, and wherein said chosen number of units is said bottleneck number of units.