Schedule Exceptions

Schedule exceptions surface in the Inbox when a scheduling decision creates a soft conflict. They are routed to the Planner queue; Production Managers and Admins inherit that queue for operational oversight. Planners do not inherit material approvals or product-setup work from Production Management.

These are different from schedule blockers. Blockers prevent a schedule from being published. Exceptions are warnings that still allow publish but require human review.

Kinds

Tank Over Capacity

The total scheduled output for a tank or line on a given date exceeds its configured capacity. The comparison depends on how the capacity is expressed:

• Count capacity (or no unit set) — the summed planned cases across that day’s entries are compared directly against the figure. For a packaging line, the capacity figure means cases per day (a daily throughput rate, not a fixed run size).
• Volume capacity (gallons, liters) — each entry’s planned cases are converted to liquid volume through its Manufacturing Order’s packaging chain (cases × bottles per case × fill volume per bottle) and the summed volume is compared against the tank’s capacity. Orders without a packaging chain (formula-only) can’t be converted and don’t count toward the total.

How to resolve. Move one or more entries to another day or tank, or reduce planned output. The exception auto-resolves once total scheduled output for that tank and date is at or below capacity.

Changeover Overruns The Day

Two runs on adjacent days on the same line require a changeover — and that changeover, on its own, is at or over the line’s working hours for the incoming day. In other words, re-tooling the line would consume the whole shift before the next run could even start. This most often happens on a container-size change (reconfiguring a line to a different fill size), which carries the heaviest changeover figure.

How to resolve. Group the like formula or container size on adjacent days so the transition is cheaper, move one run to another day or line, or lower the line’s changeover figures if they’re set too high. The changeover figures come from the line’s setup in Tanks & Lines.

Scheduled In The Past

A schedule entry has a scheduled date before today. This usually indicates stale draft edits or intentional back-dating.

How to resolve. Move the entry to today or later, or resolve with a note if the back-date is intentional.

Late Risk

A manufacturing order is projected to miss the client’s requested delivery date based on the production lead time and supplier lead time for its materials.

The system evaluates this when:

• A manufacturing order is scheduled (or rescheduled) in the planning calendar
• A purchase order’s expected delivery date changes
• A sales order’s requested date changes
• New manufacturing orders are generated from a sales order

How the deadline is calculated. Starting from the sales order’s requested date, the system subtracts the product’s production lead time to get the order start deadline — the latest date the batch can start and still finish on time. The order start used below is the order’s scheduled start when it has one, otherwise the order start deadline. For each material with insufficient on-hand stock, it subtracts the supplier lead time and a receiving buffer to get the PO send-by date.

Late risk fires if any of the following is true:

• The chain is already infeasible at creation — even ordering every shortage material today, the earliest feasible completion lands after the requested date
• The order’s scheduled start date is after its order start deadline
• A linked purchase order’s expected arrival date is after the order start

How to resolve. Open the manufacturing order detail page. The Promise Date Chain panel shows exactly which conditions triggered the alert and the specific dates involved. Common responses:

• Expedite the purchase order (change expected delivery date or contact supplier)
• Move the order’s scheduled start to an earlier date in the calendar
• Renegotiate the client’s requested date
• Accept the risk and resolve the inbox item with a note

The exception auto-resolves when the manufacturing order’s date chain no longer indicates late risk — for example, when a purchase order’s expected date is moved to arrive before the order needs to start.

What is not a schedule exception

• Tank double-booking within a scenario is a hard conflict — the system blocks the entry at edit time, before publish.
• Readiness blockers (missing tank or line, missing assignment, etc.) appear separately as publish blockers, not as exceptions.