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Description

Shop Floor Scheduling: Sequencing Work and Meeting Committed Lead Times

Build a workable shop floor schedule that survives the urgent requests and disruptions of the week

  • 2 days — 14 h
  • In-person or virtual
  • Foundation
  • Up to 6 participants

The production plan states what must be manufactured over the month. What remains is deciding what the workshop actually builds tomorrow morning, on which machine and in what order. An urgent customer request comes in, an operator is absent, a tool is unavailable, and the sequence built the day before no longer holds.

Two days focused on the short term rather than on medium-term planning. Participants learn to set milestones and then sequence while protecting the bottleneck, to release only orders that can genuinely be executed, to track progress at the workstation and to arbitrate an urgent request without disrupting the entire week.

Learning objectives

  • Distinguish milestone setting from scheduling and from planning
  • Sequence an order book while protecting the bottleneck resource
  • Verify the release conditions of a manufacturing order
  • Track actual progress at the workstation and detect delays in time
  • Arbitrate an urgent request by measuring its effect on the rest of the programme

What makes this programme different

Priority rules are compared on the same order book to demonstrate their effects
A full week of shop floor activity is simulated with breakdowns and urgent orders injected during the exercise
The scheduling dashboard is built from each participant's own indicators

Programme

1Positioning Scheduling

Between the production plan and the workstation

  • Distinguish planning, milestone setting and scheduling
  • Gather the information required before any order release
  • Identify resource and tooling constraints
  • Define the frozen horizon and the rescheduling interval

2Building the Programme

Sequencing without creating a new bottleneck

  • Apply forward or backward scheduling depending on the objective pursued
  • Apply priority rules and measure their effects
  • Group production runs to limit changeovers
  • Protect the bottleneck resource with a properly sized buffer stock

3Steering the Week

Releasing, tracking and adjusting

  • Check release readiness before issuing the manufacturing file
  • Track actual progress at the workstation without adding data entry burden
  • Detect a delay before it becomes a customer delay
  • Insert an urgent order while measuring its cost to the programme

4Building Long-Term Reliability

Committed lead times that are genuinely met

  • Measure on-time performance and analyse the causes of variance
  • Correct routing times using shop floor measurements
  • Organise daily dialogue with production and sales
  • Build a scheduling dashboard that everyone can read

Who is it for

Schedulers, order release coordinators, shop floor supervisors and production managers responsible for short-term planning.

Prerequisites

No prerequisites

Dates & locations

36 scheduled dates between November 2026 and December 2027. Seats are confirmed in the order enquiries are received.

November 2026

December 2026

January 2027

February 2027

March 2027

April 2027

May 2027

June 2027

September 2027

October 2027

November 2027

December 2027

None of these dates suit you? We open additional sessions on request, and any programme can be run privately for your team.

Practical details

Before the programme
Online positioning questionnaire. Your development objectives are shared with the trainer, who tailors the practical case studies to your context.
Teaching methods
Theoretical input, workshops and practical case studies. Digital course materials and method sheets provided.
Assessment
Multiple-choice tests and role-play exercises. Assessment of learning at the start and end of the programme, with immediate and 60-day follow-up evaluations.
After the programme
One year of access to the e-learning platform. Self-assessment of the skills acquired and a 30-day follow-up session with your trainer.
How to register
Registration online or on the basis of a quotation.
Lead time
11 working days after confirmation of registration.
Accessibility
Accessible to people of determination. Contact our accessibility coordinator to design a suitable solution: contact@mpf-academy.ae
Start dates
Rolling intake: in addition to the scheduled sessions, this programme can start on request.