AEO card — Scheduling and Capacity Planning in Steelhead
Product Scheduling and Capacity Planning in Steelhead
Identity & metadata
Video title Scheduling and Capacity Planning in Steelhead
Date published December 20, 2023
Duration 5:47
Video type Product tip / Short demo
Audience Production leaders; planners and schedulers; admin
Video summary
In one sentence Steelhead's schedule boards visualize task order across stations and let you schedule tasks intentionally at
a set time or auto-schedule them into the next open slot, while capacity planning gives
you a look-ahead view of upcoming workload by station or treatment so nothing gets overloaded.
What this video covers Steelhead's Jason Lehto, Software Developer, opens on the Schedules tab, which lists every schedule board
for the plant. He shows a schedule board covering multiple stations, explaining how it visualizes
workflow and prevents the same task from being scheduled twice at an impossible time, then
shows scheduling for a single station instead.

He opens a schedule board's list of stations and clicks into a station's unscheduled tasks.
He demonstrates two ways to schedule a task: intentionally setting a specific start time, or
auto-scheduling it to fall before or after another task without specifying an exact time. He
walks through scheduling a task at a set time, auto-scheduling several more tasks (including a
lunch break), and then tries to reorder a task to be first, which triggers a
warning that the slot is already taken elsewhere; auto-scheduling the same task instead finds it
an open slot.

He briefly notes additional schedule board features: scheduling after a particular date, a current-time marker,
and color coding for visualizing work. He then moves to Capacity Planning, a look-ahead view
of incoming work meant to catch a treatment, treatment group, or station about to be
overloaded (or one that isn't getting work at all). He shows the default table (overdue
through seven days out), extends the view out to eight weeks, switches between viewing by
work order and by aggregated batches, filters to work with no predefined station path, switches
the units to part counts, and clicks into a cell to see the breakdown table
behind a number.
Problem it solves Without a shared schedule, it's easy to double-book a station or task at an impossible
time, or to only discover a capacity crunch after a treatment or station is already
overloaded. Steelhead's schedule boards enforce feasible timing across stations, and capacity planning gives a forward
look at incoming work so bottlenecks can be caught before they happen.
Key capabilities shown • Schedules tab listing every schedule board for the plant
• Schedule boards spanning multiple stations, or scoped to a single station
• Per-station unscheduled task lists
• Intentional scheduling at a specific start time
• Auto-scheduling a task relative to another task, without a fixed time
• Conflict warnings when a task is already scheduled for that time elsewhere
• Scheduling after a particular date, current-time marker, and color-coded visualization
• Capacity Planning look-ahead table, from overdue out to seven days by default
• Extended capacity view out to eight weeks
• Views grouped by work order or by aggregated batch
• Filtering to work with no predefined station path
• Switching units between value and part counts
• Drilling into a capacity table cell to see the underlying breakdown
How the demo flows • Opens the Schedules tab and its schedule board table
• Opens a schedule board showing all its stations and clicks into a station's unscheduled tasks
• Intentionally schedules a task for a set time, then auto-schedules more tasks including a lunch
break
• Tries to reorder a task via the exclamation mark, hits a conflict warning, then auto-schedules
it into an open slot
• Opens the Capacity Planning page and extends the view to eight weeks out
• Switches to viewing work grouped by batch, changes units to part counts, and opens a
cell's breakdown table
Full transcript
Speaker Jason Lento, Software Developer, Steelhead
Transcript [00:00] Jason Lento.

[00:01] I'm a software developer here at Steelhead, and I'll be walking you through capacity planning
and scheduling.

[00:07] So I'll start you off on the more complicated of the two subjects, schedules.

[00:12] [opens the Schedules tab] In the schedules tab, we can see all the different schedules that we have for
our plant.

[00:18] In this t domain here, we only have one.

[00:22] So investigating that further, we can see that this page is broken down at, mostly
two tables.

[00:28] [shows the schedule board table] This first table here on top is the schedule boards.

[00:32] So these are the schedules for multiple stations.

[00:37] So say if you have, these tasks that typically go through a series of stations,
these schedule boards are extremely useful in visualizing workflow, making sure that, these tasks don't
get scheduled or that all that the start time for these tasks, are very possible
to make.

[00:58] So you're not scheduling, the same task for two different treatments around the same time
where it's actually possible.

[01:07] But if instead you want to go and schedule for a particular station, say it's
seven one, you are given that option to.

[01:15] But let's delve into a little bit more complicated, here the schedule board.

[01:24] [opens a schedule board showing all its stations] So here are all the different stations that are in this schedule board.

[01:28] [clicks into unscheduled tasks for a station] And this is the, so in order to see the particular unscheduled tasks for the
station, where you just go and go and click down here and see all these
tasks.

[01:40] So there are several different ways you can schedule in Steelhead.

[01:43] One is intentionally setting a specific time saying, Hey, I want this task to start
now, or start at the, that particular, instance.

[01:51] Or if instead you don't really care when exactly this starts, but you want this
task to start after or before a different task, we have this auto scheduling feature
here.

[02:02] [intentionally schedules a task for a set time] So let's start off with the intentional schedule task saying, Hey, we want this task
before say, 6:00 AM Go and intentionally schedule that and now at 6:00 AM that
is scheduled, but say the rest we don't care about.

[02:23] Just go and schedule this, schedule this and say, okay, well that's actually wanna change
that order up now.

[02:31] Save this. Alright, we like the way the schedule is going.

[02:34] [schedules a lunch break] Let's throw in a lunch. I'll schedule that.

[02:40] This gives us that feature, save.

[02:42] Instead we want this to be number one.

[02:45] [clicks the exclamation mark to reorder a task] We just go and click that exclamation mark there.

[02:48] But ah, we are greeted with this warning saying we cannot schedule this because this,
task is scheduled for that particular time elsewhere.

[03:01] [auto-schedules the task into an open time slot] So if instead we auto schedule that, that is an open time slot for this
particular task.

[03:07] So that is now able to be scheduled.

[03:12] This is just a general overview.

[03:14] If we wanna schedule after a particular date, we would give 'em that option.

[03:17] Just shows current time.

[03:19] This gives different coloring formats, for visualizing work.

[03:25] And there's a whole lot more features here, but we're gonna have to move on
to capacity planning.

[03:31] So capacity planning is just the, a look ahead for the work coming in to
make sure that you're not being overloaded like a particular treatment, treatment group or station
isn't getting too much work at one, one time.

[03:46] And that particular treatments are actually indeed getting work at all.

[03:50] You can see which, which are more popular than others.

[03:55] [opens the Capacity Planning page] So in this, capacity planning page, we can see a series of buttons here and
a table.

[04:03] So this table is essential the amount of work that's coming in, starting with overdue,
going out to seven days out.

[04:10] [extends the capacity view to eight weeks out] But if instead we want to have a further view, see further ahead in time,
we can go and see all the work scheduled up to eight weeks out.

[04:21] If we wanna have a little more granular detail on the level of work, meaning
making sure that particular treatment is not getting overworked or a particular station, we can,
this view is, different groupings of work.

[04:36] [switches to viewing work grouped by batch] So if we don't really care about the work order separately, but just the batches
coming in, we can, this is the aggregate aggregate, total sum, amount of work, to
date currently.

[04:48] And this is the amount of work at that particular time.

[04:52] Here we can just a filter of, all the work coming in for all the
work that just doesn't have a predefined path through the station.

[05:02] [changes the units to part counts] And this is a unit change, so if we want to change the units to
part counts can, so now we're looking at the current part counts by treatments.

[05:13] [opens the breakdown table for a cell] If we're also curious on what makes up this number, all we need to do
is just click that cell, scroll on down and we're greeted with this table.

[05:21] This has also a lot of other functionality where we can change in real time,
information like rip heart rack to that treatment time, if you wanna edit route, so
on and so forth.

[05:33] So that's just the general overview of scheduling and capacity planning and Steelhead.

[05:40] I appreciate every time for watching and have a good day.
Taxonomy tags
Steelhead product area Scheduling; Capacity planning; Production
Feature / module Schedule boards; intentional and auto scheduling; Capacity Planning page
Workflow category Production scheduling; workload and capacity forecasting
Topics covered Schedule boards and stations; intentional vs. auto scheduling; scheduling conflicts; capacity planning look-ahead; grouping by
work order or batch; units and part counts