K-08
Schedule Attainment
Did production build what the schedule said, when it said — measured against which frozen schedule, on volume or on mix, and do overbuilds cancel shortfalls?
There is a reference build of this metric: the Production Schedule Performance dashboard in the showcase runs this definition over frozen, simulated data — not a live client system.
Definitions and source tables below are current to the date above — verify against current SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Infor, and Databricks documentation before you build.
What schedule attainment measures
Schedule attainment is the factory's OTIF: did production build what the schedule said it would build, in the period the schedule said. It compares completions against a committed plan, which makes it one of the few operations metrics that can be gamed without anyone touching the shop floor.
The gaming mechanism is the schedule snapshot. Planning systems re-cut the schedule continuously, and the ERP holds only the current version — so an attainment figure computed against whatever the schedule says today converges on 100% by construction, because the schedule has already been rewritten to match what happened. Freezing the schedule at the planning fence, and storing that snapshot outside the ERP, is what makes the metric mean anything at all.
The second decision is what counts as building the right thing. Volume attainment compares total units built against total units scheduled and will happily award a perfect score to a week that built entirely the wrong items. Mix attainment credits each item only up to what was scheduled for it, so building extra of an easy item cannot pay for missing a hard one.
One thing this entry cannot do is inherit a definition, because none is published. Full-text scans of the CSCMP glossary, the industry's main process-reference model, and the ASCM Dictionary return nothing for attainment or adherence in any form — the four aliases above circulate as if interchangeable, and the constructions behind them disagree on how to treat overshoot, on which schedule version belongs in the denominator, and on the grain at which credit is capped. Everything below is therefore an authored house convention with its alternatives named beside it, not a standard restated.
Also answers to Production Plan Adherence · Schedule Adherence · Build Plan Attainment · MPS Attainment
The decision switches
Three switches. The first one decides whether the metric is a measurement or a formality.
| Switch | Settings | Practice default |
|---|---|---|
| Schedule snapshot | Frozen at period start · Current schedule | Freeze at the planning fence and store the snapshot — the ERP overwrites it. |
| Volume vs mix | Volume attainment · Mix attainment | Mix attainment as the headline, volume attainment beside it. |
| Overbuild treatment | Netted · Capped per item at 100% | Cap the credit, and report the overbuild percentage separately. |
Schedule snapshot
- dependsFrozen at period start — the honest default — the commitment as it was made
- raises the scoreCurrent schedule — every re-cut launders a miss, and attainment converges on 100% by construction
Practice default Freeze at the planning fence and store the snapshot — the ERP overwrites it.
Volume vs mix
- raises the scoreVolume attainment — total built over total scheduled — the right total of the wrong items still scores 100%
- dependsMix attainment — credit per item capped at what was scheduled, then summed
Practice default Mix attainment as the headline, volume attainment beside it.
Overbuild treatment
- raises the scoreNetted — overbuilding one item silently pays for missing another
- dependsCapped per item at 100% — overbuild becomes its own reported problem rather than credit
Practice default Cap the credit, and report the overbuild percentage separately.
Formula & grain
Mix attainment = Σ min(qty completed, qty scheduled) ÷ Σ qty scheduled
- Numerator
- Completions credited at most to plan, per item, against the frozen schedule
- Denominator
- The frozen schedule quantity for those items
- Grain
- Item × line or work center × schedule period, usually a week
- Note
- Volume attainment drops the per-item cap; the gap between the two numbers is the mix miss.
Common pitfalls
- Measuring against the living schedule — If the denominator is whatever the system says today, the metric measures nothing. Snapshot the schedule at the fence and store it, because the ERP will overwrite it without a trace.
- Netting mix misses inside volume — Total built over total scheduled hides the item-level story completely. Report mix attainment as the headline and let volume sit beside it as context.
- Counting starts, not completions — Work released and work in progress are not schedule met. Take the numerator from completion transactions, not from order status or from what was moved into the first operation.
- Averaging weekly percentages — A quarter's attainment is not the mean of thirteen weekly percentages — a light week counts the same as a heavy one. Sum the capped completions and sum the scheduled quantities across the whole quarter.
Source tables — SAP
Source tables — JD Edwards
Source tables — Dynamics 365
Production order status plus inventory transactions give report-as-finished quantities; planned requirements carry the plan side. The company is pinned everywhere, and the status enum needs decoding rather than trusting the integer.
Source tables — Infor M3
Source tables — Oracle EBS
Discrete jobs carry the planned quantity, operations and move transactions carry progress through the routing, and completions land as transactions in the material ledger. Take completions from the material ledger rather than from a job status.
Source tables — Oracle Fusion
Work orders carry the planned quantity, operations the routing, and operation transactions what was actually completed at each step. The last operation's completions are the ones that belong in the numerator.
Store the components, not the ratio
Every switch above is a different way of reading the same underlying facts, so the components — quantities, dates, values, flags — are what belongs in the gold layer, never the finished percentage. Bronze keeps the source tables as extracted, silver resolves the encodings once, and gold carries a component-level fact that each variant of Schedule Attainment reads as a SELECT — the pattern worked through in full in the OTIF entry's landing pattern.