Overview of TACTIC Software Data Needs
You can input your manufacturing data into TACTIC manually, or transfer data electronically to TACTIC from other systems. TACTIC is designed to generate schedules with minimal data, and allows you to refine your production schedules as more detailed and accurate data becomes available. For instance, you might initially provide TACTIC average set-up time. As you collect and provide TACTIC with additional data, TACTIC can automatically calculate set-up time based on the sequence in which the work is scheduled.
General Categories of TACTIC Software Data are:
- Capability Data – can include machine, tool, labor, vendor, and material availability.
- Requirement Data – can include orders and their associated routing operations, bill-of-material, and item master relationships.
- Status Data – can include progress against scheduled operations.
Data Transfer to TACTIC Production Scheduling
Some management teams integrate TACTIC production scheduling software with their business and other systems to reduce the need for manual or double data entry, and also to better use their valuable data. For example, order, bill-of-material, item master, and inventory data might be held in an accounting or an ERP/MRP II system; routing and tool information might be held in an engineering database; maintenance requirements might be held in a maintenance system; labor availability might be held in a time and attendance system; planned shift and vacation schedules might be held in a spreadsheet.
Other teams operate TACTIC software as a standalone planning, order promising, scheduling, and capacity management tool. They manually enter their formal and their informal capability, requirement, and status data.
Still other teams integrate TACTIC to obtain readily available data, such as orders from a business system, while manually providing other data – such as shop floor status. At such time as the data or data gathering are improved, they often integrate the systems more tightly.
Data Integration to TACTIC Production Scheduling Software
TACTIC allows you to link to many different personal computer and mainframe platforms – without the need to write code. You can extract and transform data from many different formats (e.g., relational data bases, spreadsheets, ASCII files, XML). In addition, you can add to your data during transformation to account for informal data and data held in personal data bases.
TACTIC lets you graphically layout your data extraction and transformation projects. You can drag-and-drop extraction and transformation process steps to create a flowchart that automates simple, multi-step, and multi-source transformations. Once your data transfer project is designed and tested, TACTIC production scheduling software can execute it behind the scenes to provide seamless integration to and from multiple data sources.
Ready to see TACTIC software in-action with your data for effective, near-effortless production scheduling? Request a free demo here and get started on the road to better, more efficient, manufacturing and production performance.