In repetitive and flow manufacturing, a planning segment is the work center in a line hierarchy which is used for scheduling and capacity planning or for sequencing.

• If you have created several processing stations as work centers on one production line, select the bottleneck work center and enter it in the production version, in the field Production line. This work center is then used as the planning segment.
• If you use the component "Line Design" to split a production line into individual elements, such as line segments, you must also maintain a line hierarchy in Line Design. In the line hierarchy, you can define a line segment as the planning segment. Otherwise, the system automatically defines the line hierarchy header as the planning segment.
• If you do not create the production line as a line hierarchy, the system automatically uses the production line as the planning segment for scheduling and capacity planning. This is only possible if you work with lead time scheduling. If you want to use Sequencing, you must create a line hierarchy for the production line.

The planning segment is used for lead time scheduling and capacity planning or for Sequencing.

In the planning table, the system uses the operation times in the planning segment for the display.

If you work with lead time scheduling, the system carries out midpoint scheduling for this work center when you make new entries and change existing data. This means the operation with the planning segment is the midpoint, and is scheduled first. The previous and subsequent operations are scheduled starting from this midpoint operation.

In order to carry out lead time scheduling and capacity planning, you must enter the planning segment in at least one of the operations in the routing.

The system uses the standard times of the operation, in which the planning segment is used, to carry out scheduling and capacity planning.

From the planning table, you can branch to the line hierarchy to change the planning segment. You can select any work center of the line hierarchy.

Scheduling is also based on the planning segment if you work with Sequencing.

If you have entered a sort buffer in the line hierarchy, you can select the planning segment in the line hierarchy, from the planning table. The planning segment is then either the line hierarchy header or a line segment that comes directly before or directly after the sort buffer.

If you work without sort buffers, the line hierarchy header is automatically used as the planning segment.