How do I set availability in Production Scheduling?

Article code: PSHDF07
Tags: Availability

Answer

You may have noticed that some shifts in your schedule are greyed out and labeled as ‘Unavailable’. See image below. This indicates that the availability of certain lines has been updated in the schedule. 

There are two ways to set availability for your lines in Production Scheduling:

1. Edit default availability
2. Override availability for specific dates 

Please note that lines and shifts must be set up in order to edit availability.

Fig. 1: Two lines marked as unavailable during 1st Shift on the schedule, and two lines marked as available during 2nd Shift

1. Edit default availability

To edit your site’s default availability, please follow these steps:

1. Select Settings at the top of the navigation bar
2. Select Availability > Default availability
3. Click on a shift to expand its default availability
4. Make your default availability selections by checking or unchecking the boxes corresponding to each line and day of the week:
   1. A checked box means that a line is typically available to run during this shift on that day of the week.
   2. An unchecked box means that a line is typically not available during this shift on that day of the week. 
   3. A disabled checkbox means that the shift is not active on that day of the week. To change the days of the week that are active for a shift, edit the shift directly.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for all shifts until you are done
6. Select Save and apply to schedule at the bottom of the page
7. Select Save and apply to schedule in the confirmation window

Result: You have updated the default availability for your site. When you navigate to your schedule, any shifts that have been set as unavailable by default will appear grayed out with an ‘Unavailable’ label for all past, present, and future weeks (as shown in Fig. 1).

2. Override availability for specific dates

To apply availability overrides for specific dates, please follow these steps:

1. Select Settings at the top of the navigation bar
2. Select Availability > Availability overrides
3. Select the date range you want to change the availability for
4. Make your availability selections by checking or unchecking the boxes corresponding to each line and shift on the specific date you want to set overrides for:
   1. Tip: Checkboxes can be selected individually for each line and shift, but you can also click on a shift or on the date at the top of the table and Select all or Deselect all checkboxes to easily set a whole shift or day as available or unavailable. 
5. Select Save and apply to schedule when you are done

Result: You have applied availability overrides to your schedule. When you navigate to your schedule, any availability overrides you applied should be reflected in your schedule.

Please note that work blocks can still be manually scheduled over areas marked as unavailable, but most scheduling operations like splitting blocks across shifts and fill-in-the-gap will not schedule work in unavailable shifts. 

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Related HelpDesk Articles:

• What is availability in Production Scheduling?
• What is a shift in Production Scheduling?
• How do I set up a shift in Production Scheduling?
• How do I add downtime to my schedule in Production Scheduling?