Not sure if FMP can do this, starting here.....

[Baylah]

I'm not sure if this is the proper forum to post this question to, but none of the headers exactly fit my question so I will start here and if I need to move the question please let me know.

I have a solution programmed that helps my company monitor our production capacity planning. This solution tracks the orders that are entered and when the proper script is called I can easily get a display of what is due on any given day(s), what is already done that day, what sill needs to be done, and the amount of capacity we can add to that day based on those results. this works great for a daily exercise.

The problem is I can not figure out is that if work is not finsihed on the prior day (or days), I can not figure out how to carry it into the next day without manually going in and changing the due date so my capacity planning will show the fact that even though I have room for (X) pieces based on what is scheduled for that day, it is untrue because (Y) pieces are still not completed from prior day(s). (the real problem here is the fact that production doesn't complete the scheduled work, but please forgive me for digressing! <grin>)

Does anyone know how I might be able to attack this problem? I know I could script a button that basically changes the due date on all unfinshed orders (noted by a check box after order goes through our finishing process) but this seems like a CLUNKY work-around at best, and I really don't want to change due dates because we also track whether or not orders are completed when originally scheduled.

This is a real "mind-bender" for me! I have thought about a solution for this for a very long time but am not familar enough with some of the truly advanced functionality to work it our on my own.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

Steve

[sbg2]

If I understand correctly I think you are overthinking the problem. It seems to me you are trying to find what jobs are still open by searching the DueDate? As you have discovered this is not reliable because not every job will be completed by, or even after, its due date. A record (or Job) should not be excluded from your search until it as marked as closed. This may be as simple as adding a DateCompleted field to your table, any record where the DateCompleted is empty should be included in your find.

[Curtis_B]

Sounds like my system is very similar to yours. I oversee production for a commercial printing company. Everything is given a due date and we (like you) do not always meet due dates for every item. I have a field called 'shipped' and it is auto entered as 'n' (for no) when the record is created. When I apply UPS tracking #s to each item (or whatever your final process may be) that script automatically changes the 'n' in the shipped field to a 'y' showing that it is complete. When I need to see what is still unfinished I just do a find for 'n' in the shipped field and sort by due date, putting the overdue items at the top of the list.

If you need the dates to change, you could run a script first thing every morning that does a find for shipped = n AND duedate < todaysdate and then replaces all the due dates with todays date.

Curt

[Baylah]

Hey Curt,

You're right, our situations are very similar, and I already have solutions almost identical to your in place. I think the only real difference is what we have named our fields! I do not have the scrupt to due change though, becuase we track on time performance, and for right now, that is based on whether or not a due date is met. If we changed the due date, it would be hard to know that, with out adding some type of modification field, which I'm sure I could, I just haven't gone that far yet, as my goal has always been to not change the due date at all.

There has to be a way to do this! C'mon all you FMP Wizards! Let's see your stuff!

Steve (studying for the certification test) Freeman

[Baylah]

Hello again Curt,

Can you explain how you write a script that will trigger an automatic change to a related field? In my solution when we creat a record it is automatically markerd OPEN. process the order will go through our finishing department, at that time the order will be "manually" changed from OPEN to FINISHED. These to fields are in a value list, check box. What would be ideal for me is that when the finishing report is created it autmatically changes the check box from OPEN to FINISHED.

I coould probably figure this out on my own, but I am admitting to being a little lazy, since it seems you ahve already figured this out! If you can help, it would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

[sbg2]

As both Curtis and I have stated you need a way to mark a job as completed. Until the job is marked as completed it should be included in the Capacity Planning script. The Due Date should not change unless the customer requests a change or you request and receive confirmation for a change.

Your Planning Capacity script should not be finding orders by Due Date, it should be finding orders by what is not completed. Whether you decide to add a text field Completed and mark it Y or N, or you use If(PiecesOrdered - PiecesManufactured < 1; "Y"; "N") to mark a Job as completed is up to you. Again you need a way to mark a Job as no longer open and it should have nothing to do with the Due Date (at least from the programming end of it).

[Baylah]

I am marking an order as finished. I can call the script and display all "OPEN" orders, this is not a problem. I already have a script that will call only "OPEN" orders for a stated time frame and sort them by oldest date first, and on the surface that seems like it would do the trick, but, it is not quite what I am shooting for.

I need to think of how to rephrase the question.

Steve