After successful implementation at Nova Pack, we observed that PM events may contain partial or empty parameters. Our debug logs picked up instances where either one or both packing rate and/or personnel value are invalid per SKU. Given the algorithm’s dependency on the PM sync, these errors resulted in the scheduler getting thrown off, resulting in unexpected results where jobs where failing to schedule, set to an incorrect status or occupying too many shifts. While these errors can and have been addressed manually, it was requested to add logic to our platform to handle these conditions more elegantly.
Resolution
1. Detect the conditions where Pack Manager values are invalid, such as incorrect packing rate OR number of packers. In this situation, the new logic will perform the following:
• Set status of all jobs related to SKU with invalid parameters to “PM lookup failed”. Currently, most of these jobs are getting set to “Too many shifts” due to incomplete data syncing over from PM side.
• Extend current feature where user can manually override packing rate & number of packers for a job with status = “PM lookup failed” and apply these new values to invalid jobs which are currently not getting scheduled.
• Attempt automatic re-scheduling for all unscheduled jobs with the same SKU where the PM values where changed (either manually or via new data coming in)
2. Intelligent check for month field with leading zeros on import, to avoid creating duplicate jobs