Operations Management: Sustainability and Supply Chain Management, Twelfth Edition

Loading Jobs

Operations managers assign jobs to work centers so that costs, idle time, or completion times are kept to a minimum. “Loading” work centers takes two forms. One is oriented to capacity; the second is related to assigning specific jobs to work centers.

First, we examine loading from the perspective of capacity via a technique known as input–output control. Then, we present two approaches used for loading: Gantt charts and the assignment method of linear programming.

Input–Output Control

Many firms have difficulty scheduling (that is, achieving effective throughput) because they overload the production processes. This often occurs because they do not know actual performance in the work centers. Effective scheduling depends on matching ...