A Revolution in Scheduling by MEX

Every once in a while something comes along that changes the way we do work and the new MEX scheduler is one of them.  It is a shift away from all the traditional methods used for scheduling, and in fact, it is incredibly useful and time saving.

Schedulers are nothing new in industry, they allow us to nominate what day and time a job is going to be done.  However, the problem with scheduling in the modern maintenance environment is that by the time the ink is dry, the schedule is out of date.  To go back and change it is a time consuming and arduous task.

The Process

MEX sat down and looked at the key facts of scheduling in a maintenance environment and with this knowledge, set about creating a new form of scheduler.  In essence, we have, and it starts off as a bulk scheduler and then allows each day or week to be further refined if so desired.

The key points of scheduling are:

• In a maintenance department there is a backlog of work.
• You need to attend to the high priority jobs like breakdowns, get some PM done and then address the other jobs.
• A small job that is 5 weeks old is more important to do than small one that is 1 day old.
• But which job goes first is not that important.  As long as the important work is attended to first.
• In most operations the manager knows how much work can be scheduled and what can be left open, due to emergencies.
•  A scheduler should learn how you schedule and become smarter and more helpful the more you use it. 

Overview

In MEX scheduler you start with a backlog of work and lots of empty boxes.

Figure 1

The listing on the left can be filtered to provide you with only the work orders that are to be scheduled.

To add work to any week or day just click the ‘Auto-Fill’ button.   Based on your preferences the schedule will be filled up.

Figure 2, displays the work load that has been added to the next 2 weeks. 

Figure 2

It is that simple. As the work is completed then the green bar starts to fill in to show what work has been done.

To view the work orders for any period by pressing the listing button the view changes displaying the work orders, figure 3.

Figure 3

Each period of scheduled work can be managed more intensely.

Work orders can be added, removed and changed to suit the conditions that exist.  A right mouse click (figure 4), will even allow for work orders to be pushed forward or back in the schedule. 

Figure 4

A workload of staff can be viewed (Figure 5).

Figure 5

In summary, this is a new type of scheduler that MEX has never come across before.  It is a swift and elegant way for work to be scheduled, where the software is actually reducing scheduling time down from an hour to seconds. 

We do realise that this will not meet every single condition and events that occur within any operation that schedules work.  But it is a far greater kick start to scheduling than what currently exists on the market.

Feature list

In this short document all the features of the MEX scheduler have not been displayed.  The features of the MEX scheduler are:

• Schedule all your work with the press of one button.
• Customise to suit your working week.  5 days, 7 day.
• Schedule by day or week.
• Shows % of scheduled work completed.
• Manually add work orders to schedule.
• Lock work orders and lock schedules so that they cannot be changed.
• PM’s automatically added to schedule.
• Schedule only a percentage of the work time available
• Over commit your schedule.
• Multiple schedules can be created.
• Hours assumed if no value entered
• Control how your schedule is filled based upon priority.
• Filter available work orders for schedule.
• Schedule over multiple days and shifts.
• Automatically allocate people to work.
• Manually add people to work orders.
• Edit and change start times, hours for each job.
• Transfer work orders to following days if not completed.
• Close work orders from scheduler.
• View the hours booked for each person.
• Print plod sheets for the day or week.
• Add work orders.
• Easily move between schedules
• Create multiple schedules.  EG electricians, Boilermakers

The Future

MEX is planning for this piece of software to continually be changed over the next few years, as we can see that little improvements being added to it will always make it a better product.  We are already working with our customers to change little parts to it.