Assignment Gantt
Review expected times, trace delivery delays, and compare or save changes to waiting work.
Overview
Access: Admin or an account granted Assignment Planner access (assignment_planner), with the relevant Machine Access. Route: /assignment-gantt.
Assignment Gantt shows assignments across selected machines and time. Use it to inspect planned windows, spot overlaps, and open related orders.
Use the view switch to move between Assignment Planner and Assignment Gantt. Review dates in the timeline, use Move for eligible assignments, or return to the planner to work with queues.
What Can I Change?
Use Move on an assignment to change eligible waiting work. Use Improve plan → Save as plan to review and save a different arrangement for the machines on the board. Reading the forecast or showing a preview changes nothing.
Drag-to-reschedule is labelled Experimental and read-only. Use the supported move and save controls described below to change the plan.
Read the Planned Times
An assignment is one operation placed on a machine or hall pool. Its planned production time uses the quantity assigned to that machine. The forecast also uses remaining work and the machine’s capacity for simultaneous assignments. Load compares booked working time with shift time in the visible range. Without shift time, this share is unknown.
For example, 2 minutes per part × 50 assigned parts gives 100 planned production minutes, plus the operation's fixed preparation time. See calculations and Plan Machine Assignments.
Understand the Forecaster
Your plan says when work should happen. The Forecaster shows when it is expected to happen, based on open orders, machines, shifts, and current production. It checks expected finishes against delivery dates so you can see which orders may be late, by how much, and why.
Open the Help
Click the information icon beside Forecaster in the toolbar to open How does the Forecaster work?. You can also open it from the heading of Attention or Improve plan. Anyone who can access this page can read the help.
The same help is available on Orders & Products, the order page, and in Assignment Planner.
How Expected Times Are Worked Out
- Running work continues from its current progress, using the quantity produced and time worked so far.
- Waiting jobs follow your plant's rule from the planning settings: planned dates, queue order, or delivery date first. A job that takes longer pushes back the work behind it.
- Machines work within their planned shifts. Nights, weekends, and breaks without a shift are skipped.
- Each step waits for the previous step of its order to finish, even when it uses another machine.
The Forecaster updates by itself about every minute.
Example
Order 4711 is due Thursday. Cutting on Laser 2 is planned for Tuesday, followed by bending on Press 1 on Wednesday. The job ahead on Laser 2 takes eight hours longer. Cutting moves to Wednesday and bending to Thursday. Press 1 has no late shift on Thursday, so bending now ends Friday at 10:00. The order shows late +10 h. The expected times have moved even though nobody changed the plan.
What the Colours Mean
| Help label | Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| On time | Green | Expected to finish before the date. |
| At risk | Amber | Not late yet, but the remaining work barely fits or an earlier step is not planned. |
| Late +3 h | Red | Expected to finish three hours after the date. |
| Late, date passed | Red | The date has passed and the order is unfinished. |
| Finish not known | Blue | The date is still ahead, but a step has no machine or no date, so no finish can be worked out. |
The delivery date is your promise to the customer; missing it is red. The planned end is the finish in your own plan; missing it is amber. See the Forecaster glossary for the renamed labels.
When Times May Be Too Early
The Forecaster only knows what is recorded in the Watchmen Platform. Expected times can be too early when:
- A step has no machine yet. Its work is treated as done when working out the expected times.
- A job has no planned duration. One hour is assumed.
- A machine has no shift plan. It is treated as available around the clock.
- Work is not started, paused, and finished on the PDA/BDE as it happens.
It cannot know about missing material, a broken tool, or someone off sick. Check these conditions before relying on an expected finish.
Your Plan Stays Under Your Control
The Forecaster never changes your plan by itself. Dates and queues change only when someone moves a job or selects Improve plan → Save as plan. These changes can be undone. Delivery dates are never changed by the Forecaster.
Compare Expected Times and Planned Dates
Open the view options and choose Expected times to see when each job is expected to run, including delays. Choose Planned dates to see each job at its planned time, without delays. The explanation below the choice changes with your selection.
If expected times are unavailable, jobs appear at their planned times without delays. The Forecaster tries again by itself. If some times are still being worked out, they are close but may move by a few minutes.
Review Attention and Waiting Work
Attention lists what is expected to go wrong on the displayed machines, worst first. Its count covers last week through three weeks ahead, plus any week you have scrolled to. Orders & Products counts only orders late for delivery across the whole company, so the numbers can differ.
Times may be too early means you should review missing machines or dates before relying on the displayed finish. When no problems are expected, the panel shows All good: nothing is expected to go wrong on these machines.
Choose By order to review affected orders or By cause to find assignments holding up other work. Open a warning and use Show the assignment it is waiting for to trace a delay. Notes distinguish Measured against the delivery date, Measured against the original plan, and Measured against the plan in Watchmen.
Never started means an assignment is more than three days past its planned start and no longer holds up the forecast queue. No planned start means it cannot be placed on the timeline. On hold too long means the hold limit has been passed, so the forecast lets the assignments behind it move up. These warnings do not mean the work is finished.
Read Machine Availability
The machine summary shows the remaining work booked by the forecast. If an assignment has no expected end, the displayed free time is only the earliest possible time. This can happen with work never started, work without a date, or a hold beyond the limit.
Follow a Whole Order
For handed-over work, the order route shows Partly done: with good parts made and where the rest is waiting. Once finished, Done on lists the machines and their quantities. The original machine's assignment shows Handed over in its tooltip and details. Handover details show where the remainder went or where it came from. Recorded times stay on the machine that did the work. To hand work over, use Assignment Planner; this action is not available in Gantt.
Select Order view and type at least two characters of the order name or number. Show the whole order on the board highlights its assignments and outlines work it is waiting for. Other work is dimmed. Show steps lists its route; Back to machines returns to the machine view.
A step in a hall pool is not yet on a machine. A missing expected end means the order will finish later than shown. If only part of the route can be shown, the page says so. Open Earlier step not planned and choose Assign to a machine when available. The step keeps its own planned dates and the later steps are forecast again. Without a planned start, assigning a machine alone still leaves the step unplanned.
Move Waiting Work
Open an assignment and choose Move → Earlier, Later, Run next, or To machine…. Check its expected start and end, the other assignments delayed, and the number of late orders before saving. The review also shows how many assignments on that machine will be replanned.
Running, on-hold, and finished assignments cannot move this way. Work already recorded prevents changing the machine. A move cannot put a step before an earlier step of the same order on that machine. When the plant orders work by delivery date, you can change the machine but cannot reorder the queue by hand. Claim hall-pool work in the Assignment Planner.
Use Undo to reverse a move. If the queue has changed since, automatic undo is refused; move the work back by hand after reviewing the current queue.
Compare Queue Orders Before Saving
Open Improve plan for the machines on the board. Compare Today with the alternative orderings. Review Deliveries at risk, Total lateness, and Would move. Orders without a delivery date are not counted in the delivery comparison.
Show on board previews how the whole plant would look with that ordering. The list and the line beneath each alternative show what saving would actually change: running, on-hold, and blocked work keep their place. An attractive preview can therefore give a worse result when saved. Read the saving result before deciding.
Save as plan gives eligible assignments a new queue position and planned start and end in Watchmen. It keeps the original dates beside the Watchmen plan and does not change delivery dates, machine assignments, running work, or the plant’s ordering rule. Save as plan replaces the earlier action label Start Auto-Assign.
Work behind an unplanned earlier step cannot be saved from this comparison because its expected times are too optimistic. Review the work left unchanged and any explanation that there is nothing to save. Use Undo if you need to return to the previous plan. If someone changed the plan during your review, nothing is saved and the board reloads; check it again.
Follow Plan Machine Assignments for the review and saving steps.
Planning Settings
Administrators open Planning settings → Planning to choose How does your plant decide what runs next? This rule is used by the forecast and delay notifications. Comparing or previewing alternatives does not change it.
| Ordering | Effect on waiting assignments |
|---|---|
| Follow planned dates | Runs by planned start; no assignment starts before that date. |
| Follow the queue | Uses the Assignment Planner’s queue; planned dates are ignored, so work may start earlier. |
| Follow the queue, not before the planned date | Keeps queue order but waits for each planned start. A later-dated assignment can hold up everything behind it. |
| Delivery date first | Orders work that can still arrive on time by delivery date. Already-late work goes first only if it does not make other work late. |
Hold limit (working hours) determines when paused work stops holding its machine in the forecast. Enter a duration between 1 minute and 720 hours. Only the machine’s working time counts; a weekend without shifts uses none. Where no shifts are planned, 24 hours count as the full limit. After the limit, the assignment is warned about and the work behind it moves up.
For machine capacity, administrators set Jobs in parallel in Machine Configuration.
View Controls and Limits
Select up to 25 machines. You can tick several machines or a hall group while the selection menu is open. Close it to apply the selection and update the timeline. Clearing the selection while the menu is closed takes effect immediately. Gantt has no hall-pool columns; use Assignment Planner for pools.
Use View options → Bars show to choose Expected times or Planned dates. Compare Planned (original), Planned (Watchmen), Expected, and Actual in the assignment details. Row height offers Normal, Compact, and Large. Drag to pan, use Ctrl with the mouse wheel to zoom, or press N to return to now.
Forecaster unavailable means you see planned times without calculated delays. Forecaster: approximate means expected times may still shift slightly. Incomplete means some assignments could not be loaded; select fewer machines.
Without a shift plan for the displayed period, the machine is assumed to be available around the clock. This also applies when shifts follow machine activity or have not yet been planned that far ahead. Check this assumption before relying on the finish.