Skip to content

Which orders to take, and in what order to run them

Say you have five orders on the table and 40 person-weeks to spend. Take them as they come and you accept A, B and D for $270,000. Take B, C and D instead and the same capacity earns $350,000. We build a system that makes this choice for your real orders, and also plans how you batch them and schedule machines, crews and bays.

Those five orders are the example in our order-acceptance check . Try it with yours.

One pool of capacity

Taking orders and scheduling them use the same hours. When different people decide them separately, you pay for it in overtime and late deliveries.

  1. Which orders to accept?

    A profitable order can push out work you already promised. We weigh its margin against the capacity it takes.

  2. How to batch and sequence?

    Each changeover costs you production time. Better batching gets more out of the same plant.

  3. How to schedule people, machines and bays?

    People, machines and bays run out at different times. The plan has to fit all of them at once.

  4. What if the forecast is wrong?

    A plan made for a normal week fails when supply is late or a rush order comes in. We make plans that still work in that week.

A few plans, and you pick

One keeps every deadline but leaves some machines idle. Another uses more capacity and risks a late penalty. You choose how much margin you give up for safety.

For the owner

  • A rule for which orders to take and by what date, and for each order, which other work it pushes out.
  • A schedule that fits your real limits and still works when the forecast is wrong.
For the technical reader

Read the method

What we need to see

Your order and demand history, the limits you plan around (capacity, skills, changeovers, travel) and how you record acceptance, service and cost today.

Where to start

Talk to Jiri or Ivo about how you take and schedule orders. Talking to us costs nothing, and most clients go straight to building. If you want the numbers first, a short audit on one decision tells you what your current rule costs you. For a longer example, read our case on order acceptance.

Questions about capacity and scheduling

How is this different from a scheduling platform?

We start with one decision you make today, like which orders to accept. We build the model into the systems you already have, and you keep it.

How do we know your rule is better than ours?

We test it against the way you decide today, on your own past orders. We recommend it only if it does better.

Tell us how you take orders today

Tell Jiri or Ivo how you decide which orders to take and when to run them. We will tell you what a better rule could be worth.