Visual flags are just the computerized transcription of what the in-charge of wall schedules have been using for a long time on their cardboard jobs: a sticker, a stroke of fluo marker, a color paper clip, a cut corner, etc.
In Direct Planning, flags are visual indicators set aside to draw the planner’s attention on a job’s status. Concretely, they consist in colored rectangles just on top of a job, or inside, on the right-side. The color and the background pattern can be configured according to the status of the flag. You can configure up to 10 flags. There are different kinds of flags.
Flags are important elements of the configuration of the planning for your trade.
Direct Planning Industry – Visual flags
Watch this video (in French) to discover the flags:
The different kinds of flags
Basic flags
They only have two states: present or absent in a job.
Examples:
- Customer dispute
- Test order
- Urgent order
- Management confirmation required before production launching
Multi-state flags
Each of them can have up to 5 states. Each level is assigned a different color. The symbolism of traffic lights red/yellow/green is often used.
Examples:
- Awaiting receipt of material (with following states: “Material to order”, “Material ordered”, “Material received”).
- Awaiting receipt of tools (with following states: “Tool to order”, “Tool ordered”, “Tool received”).
- Production status (with following states: “Do not start production”, “Production to start”, “Printing completed”, “Forwarding completed”, “Delivery completed”).
Multi-state flags with awaiting receipt of an item
This extension of multi-state flags has been particularly designed for the flags where you specify that you are waiting for an item before launching production.
An estimated date of receipt is entered on the flag. As long as the item has not been received, an earliest start date is imposed on that job. Thus the production cannot start before the estimated date.
Furthermore, on the day of the estimated receipt, Direct Planning generates an alert in order to notify of the delay in the receipt of the expected item.
Direct Planning Industry – Entry of a multi-state flag (with awaiting item receipt)
Entry of customizable data for each flag
For multi-level flags, you can customize the flag entry window by adding up to 10 configurable areas.
For example, for a flag such as “Awaiting receipt of special ink”, you would create two additional fields “Supplier name” and “Purchase order number“.