What Controls the Number of eKanban Orders Visible in the Operator Portal

Maybe you've looked at your Operator Portal and thought, "Where are all my orders?". Or possibly you've wondered why each Operator Portal seems to show a different number of orders in the eKanban queue. Here, we'll decipher how the number of orders in the eKanban Queue on the Operator Portal screen is determined and review what settings you can adjust to change this number and customize it by line.

There are three settings that affect the orders visible in the eKanban queue:  Number of product orders that are visible on the operator portal at a time (Site Default) and Number of days to look ahead in the product order queue to display product orders and to change over to product orders, which are Production Settings (Production > Settings), and Number of product orders visible on the operator portal, which is a Line setting (Setup > Line > [line]).

In the examples above, Number of product orders that are visible on the operator portal at a time (Site Default) is set to 5 and Number of days to look ahead in the product order queue to display product orders and to change over to product orders is set to 3. ​These settings mean that the maximum number of orders that appear in the Operator Portal eKanban queue is defaulted to 5 for all lines in the site, and that when populating the eKanban queue, the system will only pull the maximum of five orders from the line's orders scheduled to start within 3 days of the current date. If fewer than 5 orders are scheduled to start within 3 days of the current date, the Operator Portal will only show that number of orders in the eKanban queue. Both of these Production Settings have a maximum value of 20.

However, for the specific line in question - Cranberry Nut Bread, Number of product orders visible on the operator portal is set to 8. If a value is entered for this line setting, it will override the Production Setting Number of product orders that are visible on the operator portal at a time (Site Default) for that line. Otherwise, it will equal that site default value. Looking at the Operator Portal for the Cranberry Nut Bread line, there are eight orders visible:

The last order that appears on the eKanban queue for the Cranberry Nut Bread line is ​​"9097312020". Clicking into the "View Queue" button in the eKanban Queue header brings up the list of all orders scheduled for that line.

Applying the Line and Production Settings to this queue, a verification of how the settings function can be performed. With the current date of April 1, 2020, a 3 day look ahead period, as specified by the Number of days to look ahead in the product order queue to display product orders and to change over to product orders Production Setting, includes all orders through "7537262020". However, since the Line setting for Number of product orders visible on the operator portal is set to 8 only the first eight orders, up through order "9097312020", will be displayed. If the Line setting were not overriding the Production Setting Number of product orders that are visible on the operator portal at a time (Site Default), which is set to 5, then only the first five orders would appear in the eKanban Queue on the Operator Portal - up through order "1209572020".