Scheduling for R&D can be a bit different than scheduling for production departments. Research and development departments in some manufacturing environments can often be a simplified version of the manufacturing process but in some companies the R&D functions can be even more complex. In some R&D environments there are development procedures such as tooling development, advanced testing parameters or quality functions that make scheduling production runs and projects more complex.

We have developed systems for companies like Johnson & Johnson and Campbells soup that take the various stages of R&D into account in addition to the manufacturing. One of the handy tools that we developed was a planning board that could be arranged in a hierarchy by project that would look at all aspect of the project in relationship to one another. Tuppas prides itself in being able to rapidly develop tool for specific industries. Many software companies develop tools for a specific vertical market and they tend to overdevelop their tools. Tuppas concentrated on a toolkit that allows us to change our systems quickly so that we can adapt to the culture of our customer.

Flexibility in scheduling system design can be especially handy when building a scheduling solution for a research and development requirement. We’ve created an ability to implement electronic planning boards for distinct tasks which can be a real advantage when scheduling or communicating complex tasks.

Another area where flexibility is very important is the design of the schedule optimization routine(s). Scheduling optimizations can obviously become very complicated.

This post was created by Paul Tupciauskas Paul is one of the founders of Tuppas Software Corporation Tuppas develops configured manufacturing solutions for manufacturing.

This is a good blog on production scheduling The Production Scheduling Blog. The blog offers a lot of information on scheduling and capacity planning.