Schedrix help

Schedrix™ Production Sequencing proposes the order in which to run your production orders on a line, so that changeovers take as little time as your rules allow, and shows you the proposal before anything changes. Your planners decide what runs: Schedrix doesn't move production orders until someone chooses Apply.

For help that isn't on this page, see the support page.

What you need

• Business Central online, with Manufacturing: items with routings, machine centres or work centres, and firm planned or released production orders.
• Schedrix sequences an order when it has one operation on the resource pool's lines and its routing stays on the pool. It leaves out an order with several operations on the pool, or one whose routing leaves it, and says why.
• Two item attributes on the items you sequence: one for allergens and one for the changeover family (for example "Allergens" and "Changeover Family"). You choose which attributes Schedrix reads on the Schedrix Setup page.
• An administrator to run Set up Schedrix once.
• For planners, the Schedrix Planner permission set. To apply a sequence or record downtime, they also need the D365PREM MFG, EDIT permission set.

Set up Schedrix

Open Assisted Setup and choose Set up Schedrix. The wizard takes you through these steps.

1. Privacy notice. Read what Schedrix sends to its service, and agree to the notice. Only an administrator can agree for your organisation.
2. Allow HTTP requests. A sandbox blocks calls to services outside Business Central until an administrator allows them: open Extension Management, choose Schedrix Production Sequencing, and switch on Allow HttpClient Requests. Production environments skip this step.
3. Get a tenant key. Enter your email address and your company name. Schedrix emails you a 6-digit code.
4. Enter the code. The code works for 15 minutes. Schedrix then saves the tenant key, encrypted, in Business Central.
5. Test the connection. Choose Test Connection to check that the Schedrix service accepts the key.
6. Demo data (sandboxes only). To try Schedrix before using your own data, let it create a synthetic food company in the sandbox. You can remove it later from Schedrix Setup with Remove Demo Data.

Set up a resource pool

A resource pool is the group of lines Schedrix sequences together. Open Schedrix Resource Pools and create one.

• Lines: add the machine centres or work centres whose operations Schedrix may move between.
• Sequence For: choose Fewest Full Cleans to keep the number of full cleans as low as possible first, or Fewest Changeover Minutes to keep the total changeover time as low as possible.

Changeover rules

Rules say how long a changeover takes from one item to the next. Search for Schedrix Changeover Rules. The same rules apply to every resource pool. A rule stays Draft until you confirm it, and only confirmed rules are used.

Write a rule in plain English

Write the rule as you would explain it to a new planner, for example "Moving from a product with milk to one without needs a 45-minute clean". Choose Interpret. An AI model reads the text, and Schedrix shows how it read the rule, one line per rule it found, or asks about anything unclear. Check the reading, and change the text and choose Interpret again if it's wrong. When it's right, choose Confirm.

Enter a rule as fields

If you'd rather not use AI, or it is unavailable, enter the rule as fields: what it changes over from and to (an allergen, a family or an item) and how many minutes the clean takes. Choose Check to see how Schedrix reads it, then Confirm.

How rules combine

• An allergen clean is never shortened. Where an allergen clean applies to a move, the longest of all the rules that apply to it wins.
• On other moves, a more specific rule beats a less specific one, even when it is shorter. A family change that names both families beats one that says "any" family, and a rule for a pair of items beats a family change or the default. Between equally specific rules, the longest wins.

The changeover matrix

The Schedrix Changeover Matrix shows the minutes for every move between the pool's items: from the item on the row to the item in the column. A full clean is highlighted. Choose a cell to see the rule that set it. Issues lists what Schedrix found wrong with the pool's items, such as an item without an allergen or family attribute.

Propose a sequence

On the resource pool, choose Propose Sequence. Enter the Start Date and the number of Days the window covers. Schedrix collects the operations that start in the window on the pool's lines, sends them to the Schedrix service, and saves the result as a sequence run.

Working out a sequence can take a minute or two. While it runs, the run's status is Solving. Choose Get Result on the run to collect it.

Read the proposal

Schedrix Sequence Proposal shows the proposed order, line by line, with the changeover before each order and the orders Schedrix estimates will finish after their due date.

• Why Here? explains why the selected order sits where the proposal puts it.
• Before/After compares the current sequence with the proposed one: the changeover time in each, the difference against simple ways of ordering the same work, both sequences step by step, and a chart of both. Choose an order in the chart to open it.

Apply and Revert

Apply writes the proposal to Business Central: each operation's line and start, in the proposed order, with the changeover as the gap before it. Each order keeps its due date. You are asked first.

Apply leaves an order alone if it was changed after the proposal was made, or if work on it has started or output has been posted. It doesn't write to a pool that holds a capacity-constrained resource, because Business Central's finite loading doesn't keep the starts it writes there.

Revert puts the applied operations back on the lines and starts they had when the proposal was made. Operations changed after Apply are left as they are.

When something changes

• Replan from Now proposes the rest of the window again from now, after a breakdown for example. Work that has started stays where it is. Record the downtime first.
• Report a Disruption lets you describe what happened in a sentence, such as "Line 2 is down until 2 pm for a repair". Choose Interpret, and an AI model fills in the downtime from it. Check it, then choose Record Downtime to record it as an absence on the line's calendar. Schedrix then offers to replan from now.

Your data

Schedrix sends only the data a sequence or a rule needs to the Schedrix service, which runs in Microsoft Azure in the UK. The privacy policy says what is sent and how long it is kept.