A resource break is a period of time during which a resource is unavailable for normal production activities. A resource could be a work center resource (machine), an employee or a tool. After a resource break is created, the Constraint Based Scheduler (CBS) can schedule and account for it in its calculations of production time. Resource breaks can be created and scheduled to represent the unavailability of a machine, a tool or an employee due to certain situations like planned or unplanned maintenance of machines, machine breakdowns, tool rework or repair, counting or auditing in the production floor where normal operations cannot be continued by certain resources, employee planned or unplanned leave or they are unable to attend to production activities due to meetings and so on. It is the responsibility of the planner to create resource breaks representing unavailability properly and reasonably and schedule them wisely so that the production schedule that is ultimately created will be realistic and achievable.
A resource break can be one of two types: maintenance or manual. A maintenance break is automatically created by IFS Applications itself from information received from IFS/Maintenance. A manual break, by contrast, is entered by a planner against a specific resource. Any combination of work center resources, tools, and laborers can be associated with a resource break.
Both types of breaks can be moved in time in the Scheduling Server, but only a manual break can be moved after its end date range.
When a manual resource break is first entered, it has proposed status. After
it is promoted to Unscheduled, it is transferred to the Scheduling Server. The
resource break does not affect the shop schedule until it is given Scheduled
status. It is possible to change a Scheduled resource break back to unscheduled
status. It is also possible to change the status of a Proposed or a Scheduled
break to Finished, causing it to be removed from the Scheduling Server.
Resource breaks on sites that use the APB for scheduling work in a similar manner to resource breaks on sites that use the Scheduling Server. The main difference is the nonexistence of a Scheduling Server into which the breaks can be passed.
When you set up a site to use the APB and load shop orders to it, all resource breaks on the site that are in the Unscheduled or Scheduled status are also loaded.
A resource break can be created via the APB as well, whereas for sites that use the Scheduling Server you can only create them using the Resource Break window. The break can be saved back to the database once it is scheduled and the connected resources will be unavailable for operation scheduling.
A manual resource break which was created using the Resource Break window can be loaded to the APB once it is set to the Unscheduled status. Initially it will be in the Assigned status in the APB, where it can be scheduled and saved back to the database. It then is set to the Scheduled status.
Note: The Shop Order Infinite Scheduler does not consider resource breaks during scheduling.