What if an operator works across multiple work centres?

Operators are scheduled as a resource of their own, not bound to one machine. The board allocates them to the work centre that needs them in a given window; double-booking is impossible by construction.

Can I model split shifts?

Yes. A 06:00-10:00 and 14:00-18:00 split is a regular shift pattern. The board renders the gap as unavailable.

Are operator hours tracked here or in HR?

HR remains the master for hours worked. uScheduler tracks availability for planning — they are related but not the same thing. Customers who also run uShopFloor can capture total hours worked there, against the same operators and work centres, so the loop from planned to actual closes inside the suite.

Production Planning

uScheduler Production

A production plan you can actually execute.

Most production planning tools draw beautiful Gantts that nobody can act on. uScheduler Production starts from the opposite premise: every cell on the board is a decision waiting to be made. Drag an order and capacity, tooling, qualifications, sequencing and material availability all update instantly — if something does not fit, it becomes visible. Auto-Plan proposes a feasible starting point; the planner refines it; nothing changes on the floor without the planner committing. The result is a plan you can show on a screen above the line without explaining, and defend in a sales meeting when somebody asks "when can we ship it?".

Production planning board showing work centers and scheduled orders for week 19

Functionalities · 8

Advanced tier

uScheduler Production · Shifts & Calendars

The hours the floor actually works.

Shifts, breaks, holidays, planned maintenance, training time, summer hours. The calendar is where reality enters the plan — and where most planning systems quietly lose touch with it. uScheduler treats it as a first-class object.

Per work centre, per shift pattern

Different machines run different shifts. The calendar respects that. A 5×8 grinder lives next to a 7×24 oven in the same plan.

Operator availability

Holidays, illness, training, certifications expiring. Operators are scheduled into the plan, not assumed.

Exceptions without surprise

A planned maintenance window, a public holiday, a bridge day, a summer pattern. Configure once; visible everywhere.

What you see

The calendar is the contract.

Most "we missed the date" conversations end at "the calendar was wrong". A planner committed to a Tuesday that the floor knew was a maintenance day. uScheduler makes the calendar a shared object — there is one calendar, planning and floor both look at it, surprises become rare.

Per work centre and per operator calendars
Standard shift patterns: 1×8, 2×8, 3×8, 7×24, 4×10, custom
Exception calendar: holidays, maintenance, training, retooling
Forward visibility: holidays for the next 12 months
Bulk edit: apply a holiday across all work centres in one action

Auto-plan menu: fill idle times, move to earliest possible date, move to just-in-time

When this matters

Signals you'd reach for this.

Public holidays surprise the plan

A Friday holiday committed to as a working day is a familiar bug. A live shared calendar prevents it.

Training time is unplanned

An afternoon of mandatory training is unplanned capacity loss. Encode it; the plan will respect it.

Shift handovers steal an hour

Real shifts overlap for handover — fifteen minutes here, twenty there. A plan that assumes clean shift boundaries quietly over-promises every day.

Summer patterns are tribal

"We always run reduced hours in July" is tribal knowledge until it is a calendar exception.

FAQ

The questions everyone asks first.

Still wondering? Ask us directly →

It does. The base calendar comes from Business Central; uScheduler adds the resource- and operator-specific layers. One source of truth, one place to maintain.

See uScheduler Production in a 30-minute demo.

A real screen-share with someone who built it. No slides.

The uTools suite