PRODUCTION SCHEDULING

The AIS facility is tasked with the responsibility of providing computer support to the command. This includes support to medical/dental, supply, administration, financial, and maintenance. Each of these areas will have a subsystem coordinator assigned to work with you on monthly schedule requirements and on processing problems. You will also prepare daily workload schedules.

MONTHLY PRODUCTION SCHEDULE DEVELOPMENT

As the AIS manager, you will be responsible for developing and distributing a monthly AIS operations schedule. You have used monthly schedules, but you may never have given much thought as to what it takes to develop one.

To develop the monthly schedule, you must know the requirements of all the application systems/jobs to be run during the month. Many production jobs are run on a cyclic basis-daily; Monday, Wednesday, and

Friday; weekly; monthly; quarterly; semiannually; or annually. Be sure time is included for testing, planned maintenance, file maintenance, and backup procedures. For systems with online users, be sure to provide ample capacity and time.

Schedule Review

Once you have developed the monthly schedule, you must ensure that the schedule is adequate and meets the requirements. To do this, you will see that the

proposed monthly production schedule is distributed to the appropriate subsystem coordinators for their review. Before the end of the current month, the subsystem coordinators are to return the monthly schedule with their concurrences or changes and recommendations back to you for screening. You will screen it to ensure they have not overscheduled any day, and that there will be enough time for system backups and planned maintenance. The screening process should include a review by the production control coordinator, who looks for any specific input/output requirements. For example, special forms may have to be ordered. This must be done early enough to have the forms when the job is to be run. After screening the changes and recommendations and making any adjustments needed, have a smooth copy of the schedule prepared and distributed to all subsystem coordinators and the department head before the beginning of the month to which the schedule applies. Figure 1-6 is an example of part of a monthly production schedule.

Figure 1-6.-Part of a monthly production schedule..

Effects on Monthly Schedules

After the monthly schedule is completed and approved, there will always be times when it has to be changed. The subsystem coordinators are responsible for adjusting their schedule and for submitting the schedule changes to the AIS facility. Some of the things that will cause the schedule to be changed are as follows:

System/program errors. Jobs may abort because of system or program processing errors. The operator will get an error message or an indication on the system console. This may require the operator to reboot the system, recreate an input file, or rerun a job. The operator will annotate the run sheet describing the problem. The abort code will be the key to determining what caused the problem.

Software testing. You will schedule an amount of time for software testing based on your best estimate. No matter how much time you allow for software testing, it will never seem to be enough. Problems seem to arise every time you start to test a new software system. These include the system going down, the system hanging up, the system entering a loop, or a syntax error occurring that the programmers missed.

New/changed requirements. There will be times when jobs are added to the schedule to meet special needs. Examples are budget cuts, extra money at the end of the month, requisitions, tracking, and assist visit preparation.

Job conflicts. A job with a high priority maybe submitted late.

Input files not available. Sometimes there will be a delay in receiving the input files for a job.

Whatever the problem, it will be the production control coordinator's job, with your approval, to adjust the schedule to accommodate the changes required.