Forward Scheduling - Scheduling Techniques

Forward scheduling means assigning customers orders or job to various work centers based on the as early as possible approach. Thus a job is scheduling at a work centre as soon as it is free to process a job. The job is then finished as soon as possible. This approach is based on the assumption that a customer is ready to receive the goods as soon as these are produced. This scheduling approach may result in high WIP inventory if the subsequent work centre in the processing sequence of the product is busy with some other job. Forward scheduling is well suited where the suppliers usually not able to meet the schedules. This kind of scheduling is easy to use gets jobs done in shorter lead times but accumulates high work, in process inventories.