Definition
Schedule instability — also called schedule nervousness — is the condition where the published production schedule changes so frequently, or so drastically, that the floor cannot rely on it to plan setups, staging, or labor. It is a known failure mode of naive MRP regeneration and badly tuned dynamic schedulers. The fix is not to schedule less often, but to schedule with stability constraints that preserve commitments already in motion.
If your schedule goes stale within hours rather than changing too often, see why your production schedule is obsolete by lunch.
Why it matters
A schedule that changes every five minutes is worse than a schedule that updates once a shift, because the floor cannot stage fixtures, kit material, or assign labor against it. Operators stop reading it, dispatchers stop honoring it, and the planning function loses credibility. The goal of dynamic replanning is responsiveness with stability — not responsiveness alone.
Common failure mode
A new APS runs every ten minutes and resequences the entire shop on every run. The operator finishes a 45-minute setup only to discover the next job has been bumped twice. By the third bump the operator stops setting up anything until the supervisor confirms it in person.
How Skody approaches it
Skody applies stability constraints on every replan: jobs in setup or in-process are locked, sequence changes require a measurable benefit, and planner-locked operations cannot be moved. Replans surface as a diff, so the floor sees what changed and why, rather than receiving a brand-new plan every cycle.
Related terms
Questions
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