Bottleneck oriented load planning in heat treatment - optimizing the production flow saves on time and resources

Making money in heat treating is getting more and more demanding. There is obviously still the economical crisis that has caused the biggest impact on all of us, nevertheless, knowing the true dynamic capacity of our - still partially turned down - equipment and being able to squeeze out even the smallest capability will optimize the cost to earnings ratio. Everyone is using computer systems in order to plan their work-flow, however, often a disadvantage of such systems is their missing know-ledge of what has to be done with the parts when it comes to breaking down the shop orders into real loads. This article gives an overview on the existing planning layers and what different methods are used. It explains how planning consequently around bottlenecks will result in an optimized throughput while at the same time trying to minimize the total number of equipment used - hence saving resources.