Load Chart – For Scheduling, Monitoring and Tracing of production

If you have thought about how to optimize the production of low volume products, which requires highly skilled operators or costly machines, you might end up search with load chart. So read on to get a complete understanding on this topic. Load chart is a tool for scheduling, monitoring and tracing of production. You will also get an downloadable excel template at the end of this article.

Load chart is used for products which have high throughput time.

What is a load chart

Load chart is a tool used for better utilization of manpower or costly machines in a well organized manner. Load chart contains the following;

• List of activities or operations to be carried out for manufacturing a product
• Time required for carrying out each activities or operations
• Corresponding machines or equipment against each activities or operations
• A time frame for carrying out each activities or operations
• A space or area for scheduling activities or operations
• A space or area for comparing actual time taken and ideal time for manufacturing a product

The above all details will be well arranged in a chart, for getting it intended use.

Uses of load chart

So few of the points are listed below.

1. Even distribution of work elements for each manpower based on their skill.
2. Calculation of manpower utilization will be more accurate
3. Traceability of work content for customer quality requirements.
4. Effective utilization of critical facilities and skilled manpower helps to reduce production cost.

Types of manufacturing and load chart

Load chart can be applied to Job shop manufacturing and fixed position layout type manufacturing.

In Job shop type manufacturing, produces custom made products in small batches because of the lesser demand, but will need dedicated processes, in which most process will require skilled labor and special machineries. So for better utilization of these costly manpower and machineries we need proper planning, which brings profit to the organization. But it needs to be properly conveyed to both management executives and operators at the same time. So there you have it, the purpose of load chart.

In fixed position layout, machines and operators move around products.

Load Chart – Excel template download

Now its time to download load chart excel template.

Press download button below for downloading.

How to use Load chart template

There will be two sheets in the excel file;

• Load chart
• Product details.

Refer the picture below.

Now enter following details in ‘product details’ sheet.

• Part no of item to be produced
• Code for load chart (used for mentioning it in load chart, color code it for easy identification)
• List of its operations
• Cycle time of each operations
• Machines used for each operations

Refer the picture below.

After entering product details we are ready to use Load chart.

Now take ‘load chart’ sheet.

There will be following sections in the sheet;

• Machine
• Schedule
• Actual
• Date
• Hours
• Utilization

Now schedule each hours of machines according to the cycle time and operation order. Refer picture below. Use color coded code for scheduling.

After scheduling, mark the actual hours taken for scheduled operations. Refer picture below. Some times it will take more than scheduled hours.

Now you can see utilization of machines, for schedule and actual.

Also we can compare actual time taken and ideal cycle time using load chart.

You can also monitor progress of production.

So for we were discussing about machine load chart.

Now we shall discuss operator load chart.

Operator load chart

In operator load chart we schedule the work of highly skilled operators. Usage of this chart is same as load chart, as explained below.

You can download Operator load chart by pressing below button.

How to make a load chart?

1. Select the project based on priorities set by management.
2. Collect all work elements for the project and the time required to compete each element.
3. Familiarize the different orders in which the work elements can be sequenced.
4. Group each work elements together based on the skill matrix of the operators or according to machines.
5. Finalize the sequence with minimum critical paths for completing the task.
6. Schedule the work elements based on the available shift hours per day.
7. Make the chart in excel format, as shown.
8. Train the operators and supervisors to maintain the record.
9. Mark each work element as explained above
10. After completion of whole part compare the actual vs planned hours taken which can be used for calculation of the overall labor efficiency of the production unit and manpower calculation.
11. Use the data for KPI purpose and labor incentives.

With effective use of this chart comes to play for, low volume products having, high lead time to complete the production operations, since the costly software’s are not feasible for live tracking of production.

Hope this article helps you get an understanding about this topic. Please comment your valuable feedbacks and doubts.

For those who are interested in the overall equipment effectiveness, on short OEE.