How to schedule a job shop
Stop trying to schedule everything. Schedule the constraint — and use release control to keep the rest stable.
Recommended order
1) Identify the constraint
Keep decisions tied to the real chain: order entry → release → queue → setup → run → move → inspection → ship Your shop has one limiting factor that governs throughput. When that resource is protected, everything downstream becomes more predictable — and you stop optimizing noise.
Snippet-ready answer: Scheduling works when it’s constraint-driven. You identify the resource that limits delivery, align daily capacity to it, and control release so WIP doesn’t inflate. Then the schedule becomes stable enough to make decisions — not just record promises.
2) Control release
Release is the lever. If everything enters WIP immediately, queues explode and the schedule becomes a guess. Define what enters the system, when, and in what sequence — based on the constraint’s capacity.
3) Make queues visible
A job shop schedule fails when queues are invisible or averaged away. Track queues by work center and treat them as the schedule’s “ground truth.”
If a job is not ready to be processed by the constraint, it is not “ready” — even if upstream operations are complete. This single rule prevents false urgency from rewriting your whole day.
4) Align daily capacity
Daily capacity alignment is the breakthrough: each day’s release and dispatch decisions are tied to what the constraint can actually process today — not what the backlog wishes were true.