RotoScheduler manual › Reference

What the trial does not do

Describes RotoScheduler 0.3.3 · checked 2026-10-19 D5

Read this before assessing a real production plan with the trial.

• The sample is a worked example for learning the board. Replace its assumptions with measured factory data before assessing a real plan.
• Parts planned are not parts produced. Enter actual counts, deliveries and production with Count, Delivery and Report; there is no live machine connection.
• Heating and cooling targets alone do not establish acceptable process limits. Read Projected, process windows unknown and closing-time warnings as unresolved timing checks.
• The phase view describes fixed-turret machines. It does not schedule independent arms competing for an oven or a cooler.
• The arm-layout viewing pane is hidden in this trial. Use the board and its timing inspector.
• The trial has manual assignment, movement, unscheduling, undo and redo, and Dispatch and Take back for one machine-day. Run length can be checked in the inspector. Pinning a load in place, moving several runs together, copying a mounting, and editing availability on the board are not included.
• Factory and job data are entered through Factory inputs on the desktop. A general spreadsheet importer and a connection to a customer's order or shop-floor system are not included.
• Some of what the planner works with has no page in the app yet: a mold's heating and cooling windows and their approval standing, a machine-day's declared turns, the transfer time between machines, a plant's own sharing rules. This release reads them from a plan file and shows their effect on the board; no dialog edits them. Factory inputs lists the typed attributes the sharing rules compare, read-only.
• Keep a named version before an experiment and a saved .json copy for work you need to keep or share.

Dispatch and the production log

• Dispatch covers one whole machine-day, including empty cycles and mold removals. Dispatching part of a day or several days at once, keeping two dispatches in force for the same machine-day, and correcting part of a production-log line are not supported. Take back withdraws the whole dispatch; reported cycles and cycles or mold removals that had begun according to its recorded times stay protected.
• After a protected mold removal, the next production cycle on that arm takes no new work. Generate does not mount that mold on that arm again that day.
• A closed machine-day or one with no available arm cannot be dispatched. A plan already short of a mold copy dispatches as it stands; its next Apply is refused and names the dispatch.
• While protected work remains in the plan, you cannot remove its machine-day, arm or mold, lower its cycle count below what it needs, or change compatibility, heating, cooling or layout facts so it no longer fits. A lower copy count in the workbook keeps the plan's copies and lists the mold. Removing or lowering an order is accepted: its protected molds stay and the pieces no longer assigned to an order are listed.
• Dispatch records the plant's required shortages and lateness by order and stock rule. The inspector compares each answer with the last dispatch still in force. Count, Delivery, Report and Correct record actual quantities. Record stop, End and Correct record a machine or arm stop; they do not re-time the rest of its day or release its mold copies. See Count, Delivery and Report. The orders view, printed issued sheet, full production-log screen and clock screen are not included.
• There is no archive of old log lines. The compact document has an 8 MiB limit and an opened file a 64 MiB limit. Support bundles have a 100 MiB limit; each captured document includes its log.
• Opening a file solves protected molds' layouts again from today's facts; it does not keep a previously accepted layout.
• One plant's log is used on one computer in one window or browser tab. Lines from another computer and divergent logs are not merged. Opening another plant's file replaces the plant and log in use. Returning to a replaced plant from an older file, or recovering its identity from damaged storage, is not supported.
• Dispatch, Take back, Count, Delivery, Report, Stop and End, including corrections, restart Undo. You cannot undo a hand edit made before one of these acts. Opening an older file for the plant in use keeps its final board against the live log and starts a new history; it does not restore that file's Undo history.
• Files, named versions and session recordings in an older format cannot be read by this app. Keep the matching app and a saved file if you need to read an older format.
• Dispatch records planned times, not measured production times. Where the app uses nominal cycle times, protection uses those times too. A machine-day keeps its production date when its times pass midnight; there is no setting for a different production-day boundary.
• The plant clock uses the computer's time or a fixed time supplied in a sample file. No screen changes that setting. Dispatch, Take back, Count, Delivery, Report, Stop and End, including corrections, record the moment they used; a clock tick does not save the document.

Where your plant works differently from what the app assumes, the comment button under every page reaches us.