Short-term Scheduling

When there are few options to reduce costs because the majority of the expenses have already been incurred, companies are obliged to recover from disruptions that occur on the day of operations (Alipour et al, 2014). Short-term scheduling needs to be robust in the sense that it should be possible to recover from disruptions without throwing the program out and spending additional money to close the gap if they occur on the day of operations. It's also crucial to remember that a series of choices impacts scheduling throughout the entire production process (Alipour et al, 2014). The objective of this paper is to assess the strategic importance of short-term preparation in operations management.

Importance of Short-term Scheduling

Short-term scheduling is concerned with the allocation of resources that are limited to tasks within a given period. For instance, in an airline, the processes can be converted in keeping the flights as efficiently as possible despite distractions through using various mathematical planning models. The purpose of short-term scheduling is to assign and line up demand that matches daily and hourly necessities to particular equipment and workforces (Alipour et al, 2014). Programming approach must be simple, clear, easy to understand and genuine. The reasonable benefit of numerous firms may come from their elasticity to make last minute alterations.

A short-term scheduling that is real indicates that faster movement of merchandises and services through a given facility is possible (Alipour et al, 2014). It means greater use of assets hence higher capacity of capital investment with a lower cost. Similarly, added capacity, related flexibility, and faster throughput is an indication that better customer service is evident through more rapid delivery. It also contributes to commitments that are realistic hence enabling reliable delivery.

Conclusion

There are many challenges inherent in the short-term scheduling process that needs to be strategically addressed. However, consulting the short-term schedule goals such as minimizing the completion time, capitalizing on utilization and reducing work in process to ease inventories can help in the process. Besides, a good short-term scheduling must flexible and realistic as these qualities apply equally to all industries down the line (Alipour et al, 2014).

References

Alipour, M., Mohammadi-Ivatloo, B., & Zare, K. (2014). Stochastic risk-constrained short-term scheduling of industrial cogeneration systems in the presence of demand response programs. Applied Energy, 136, 393-404.