Asprova Ver.15.3

Production scheduler Asprova Ver.15.3 has been released with new functionality such as adding comments to expressions, making scheduling settings more understandable.

■Comments can now be added to expressions. This can be used to document expressions to make it more understandable, which helps to reduces dependency on any one individual.

Expressions can be used in Asprova to customize scheduling logic, GUI settings, system linkings etc, by specifying conditions or processing logic. From this version onwards, comments can be added to expressions to make it more understandable. (Green text in figure below)

The expressions are similar to the formulas used in Microsoft Excel, which are useful for customizing functionality to fulfill various user requirements, but the expressions can be long and difficult to understand even for the person who originally wrote it. As a result, customers have expressed concerns about projects becoming harder to maintain.

With comments now being able to be added to expressions, this improves readability of the settings and reduce the burden of depending on one person.

The Expression Editor usability has also been improved, with line breaks and spacing being saved and reproduced when the editor is opened again, syntax highlighting for the expressions, font settings, and a maximize dialog button.

■Ver.15.1 Compatibility Save

Although expressions can now include comments and line breaks, if the project is loaded on a Asprova before Ver.15.2, those expressions could not be parsed correctly, rendering the project file unusable on older Asprova versions.

For this situation, a compatibility saving mode is now provided to save project files for older Asprova versions, which strips out comments and line breaks from expressions when saving as a project file, exporting table, or XML exporting objects.

■Able to specify objects freely now

Object type user properties can now be created. This allows objects to be specified directly that couldn’t be done before. Some merits of this feature is:

  1. Properties for object selection can be added to tables and manipulated directly in a user friendly way.
  2. Shorter expressions can be written.
  3. Expressions that executes faster than before can be written.

This feature is highly anticipated by our users, and it has been well received by users of the beta version. Moreover, if a code for a non-existent object is entered, that object can be automatically generated using a feature.

Using expressions, creation of objects automatically during processing are now possible, for example new orders. Previously, this had not been possible.

■See multiple charts using the improved Gantt Chart row display

In the previous version, it was not possible to have multiple rows of the same object, with each row showing a different content, in the gantt chart, load graph, or inventory graph. From Ver.15.2 onwards, that is now possible by specifying the display content.

In the figure below, the resource “Inspection worker” has three rows, with one showing all of the tasks, one showing the tasks with accurate resource quantity , and one showing the load ratio graph.

Moreover, the following things are now also possible.

  1. Multiple duplicate rows of the same object.
  2. Specification of display content for each row
  3. Filtering and sorting of hierarchy rows, as well as specification of display content.
  4. Drilldown row filter

■Timeout duration for Execute shell command

Previously when using the Execute shell command, Asprova does not wait for the program to finish execution and will immediately proceed to run the next command. From this version onwards, a timeout duration can be specified in milliseconds for Asprova to wait for the executing program to finish.

A use example for this feature is when using the shell command line to do some processing on a database, a timeout duration can be specified so that Asprova can wait for the database to finish processing before running the Export command to safely export the database.

■Other

  • Improved display color setting for load ratio graphs and load amount graphs
  • Improved start up by command line. Parameters for the startup, execution, and termination can now be specified.
  • Improved drilldown menus
  • Plugin development tool COM SDK now supports Visual Studio 2017, and the folder structure has been streamlined.
  • EIIFilterCalcReplenishOrderLotSizing is now called even when pegging conditions are specified. In the Project settings, this behavior can be specified in the [EIIFilterCalcReplenishOrderLotSizing when item pegging condition is specified] property.
  • Added a new property to Project settings [Changeover setup time for operations outside working period]. If “Ignore” is specified, when calculating changeover setup times, it will ignore operations assigned outside the working time period, making scheduling faster.
  • In the Property window, a property can now be XML exported through the right click menu.
  • Added the following COM interfaces for all classes:
    • GetAsInteger/SetAsInteger
    • GetAsExpression/SetAsExpression
    • GetAsTime/SetAsTime
    • GetAsTimeSpan/SetAsTimeSpan
    • GetAsDouble/SetAsDouble
    • GetAsBool/SetAsBool
    • GetAsEnum/SetAsEnum
  • Added a COM interface for Holiday class

and so on.