Dispatching describes the operative release, prioritization and assignment of production orders to machines, lines and workstations. While ERP and planning systems define what should be produced, dispatching in the MES decides when, where and in which sequence an order is actually executed.
Simply put: planning says what should happen. Dispatching decides what actually happens now.
Production planning works with planned capacities, standard times and idealized assumptions. Dispatching works with real production conditions: machines break down, material is missing, orders are urgent, OEE fluctuates. It uses live data from the MES to release orders not statically but situationally – making it the decisive interface between plan and reality.
The largest production losses do not arise from wrong planning but from wrong sequences, waiting times and unnecessary changeovers. Without intelligent dispatching the result is excessive setup changes, WIP buildup before bottlenecks, machines waiting for material or approvals and high-priority orders starting too late.
MES-based dispatching uses OEE data, machine status, changeover matrices, material availability and delivery dates to release orders such that throughput, delivery performance and equipment effectiveness are optimized simultaneously – without new machine investments.
A cloud MES continuously calculates dispatching decisions based on machine states, OEE losses, WIP, order priorities and changeover times. The result is a dynamic order queue per machine that adjusts in real time. If a machine breaks down or scrap increases, orders are automatically reprioritized or rerouted – without manual intervention.
In multi-plant architectures, dispatching rules can be defined globally and applied locally: consistent priority logic across all sites without local island solutions.
Dispatching is a core lean building block because it directly affects flow, WIP reduction and bottleneck control. Instead of large rigid order batches, lean-based MES dispatching creates small controlled WIP buffers, clear priorities at the bottleneck and stable cycle times despite disruptions. Dispatching thus evolves from an administrative step into active control of the production system.
What is the difference between dispatching and scheduling? Scheduling creates the production plan – which order should run when on which resource, typically in APS or ERP. Dispatching implements this plan in reality and continuously adjusts it to current conditions. Scheduling is forward-looking and planning-oriented; dispatching is reactive and execution-oriented.
Can dispatching be fully automated? Partially – rule-based dispatching according to defined priority logic such as delivery date, OEE optimization or changeover minimization can run fully automatically. For complex exception situations – unexpected machine failures, rush orders, material shortages – human judgment remains valuable. Modern MES systems combine automated base logic with targeted manual intervention capabilities.
What is a dispatching rule? A dispatching rule is a defined criterion by which orders are prioritized – for example FIFO, EDD (Earliest Due Date), SPT (Shortest Processing Time) or changeover-optimized product family sequencing. MES systems allow the combination of multiple rules and their weighted application depending on situation and target metric.