General Information about Production Calendars

When Is This Procedure Used?

The purpose of using production calendars is to provide support for your production planning. A simple way of describing a production calendar is that it is used to make sure that you do not create loading and material requirements on non-working days (holidays, weekends etc.).

The Manufacturing module can be used in full, without registering any work center calendars. The system always applies the General calendar, which means that all Saturdays and Sundays are non-working days, as well as public holidays. So why should I use a production calendar? For example, in order to enter personnel vacations, or "makeup days" for your company, or to describe a work center's capacity in calendar time.

How Is the Production Calendar Used?

The window and the procedure is called Production Calendars. Here you can enter two different types of calendars. You can enter a calendar for the entire company, and a calendar for each work center. We call them Company calendar and Work center calendar. There is also a General calendar in the system. There are three calendar terms, which may be difficult to keep track of. We will try to explain the differences in this section.

• First you register the Company calendar, including vacations and "makeup days" (such as working days between holidays and half days). In some cases, it might be sufficient to only use the company calendar. However, one condition is that the entire factory has practically the same holidays and days off.
• You should use a Work center calendar, if vacations and makeup days differ between the different work centers. Another case may be when certain work centers are operating during so-called "red days" (holidays), which makes it necessary to use a work center calendar. Or if the number of shifts should be described in calendar time, for example if the capacity during a certain period or as of a certain point in time will change.
  Work center calendars only save exceptions to the company calendar. In other words, any changes made in the company calendar will be applied, even if you have created a work center calendar but not made any changes in it during that period.
  You can enter work center calendars for only some of your work centers, if you want. If there is no work center calendar entered for a work center, then the company calendar will be used instead.
• A General calendar already exists in the system, which means that all Saturdays and Sundays are non-working days, as well as public holidays. If you have not entered any work center calendar or company calendar in the system, the General calendar will be used instead.

The level of complexity in the system use depends on the level of detail used in your loading plan. Many times it may be sufficient to use the system at a simpler level. If you do not enter capacity in calendar days, you can enter "permanent values" in the work center register. Read more about this in the Update Work Center procedure, under Basic time.

Functions such as manufacturing order registration with lead time calculation, different loading procedures, pre-calculations with lead time calculation etc., all apply the company calendar as well as the work center calendars for the affected work centers.

The calendar will automatically calculate the holidays for each year. These are marked with red font and are set to capacity factor 0. Any exceptions in the work center calendar are highlighted in blue font.

When the turn of the year is approaching, you have to create new calendars! Read more about how you Switch Year in the Switch Year chapter in the Using MONITOR Procedures guide.

Window Functions

Read more about the Window functions under Window Functions in the MONITOR Basics guide.

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