Changeover-Minimizing Sequencer

The problem this kills

On a changeover-heavy line - paint, extrusion, printing, food, injection molding - the order you run jobs in quietly decides how much of your shift disappears into setup. Switch from dark to light, swap a tool, run a clean-out for an allergen, change a die or a die size, and you lose minutes or hours that never show up as "lost time" because they look like normal work.

Most schedulers fight this in their head or in a spreadsheet, grouping "the blues together" and "all the 40mm before we change the die." It works until volume spikes, a rush job lands, or the person who knows the tricks is off. Then the sequence gets sloppy and avoidable setup eats the day.

This tool turns that tribal knowledge into something repeatable: you tell it the real cost of every switch, it proposes a run order that minimizes total setup, and it shows you in plain minutes how much you just saved.

What you'll build

A small internal web app where a scheduler:

• Imports the jobs to run (with attributes like color, material, tool, size) and a changeover matrix - the setup time or cost to go from attribute A to attribute B.
• Gets a proposed run sequence that groups compatible jobs to keep total changeover low, while respecting hard rules (due-date "must run by," allergen clean-out order).
• Sees the estimated changeover time saved versus running the jobs in the order they arrived.
• Drags a job up the list or pins it when business priority demands, and watches the savings recalculate.
• Approves the final sequence and exports a clean, ordered run list for the floor.

What's inside the Implementation Plan

The plan opens by interviewing you about your actual line - your attributes, how your matrix is shaped, your must-run-by and clean-out rules, your job/WO numbering, your typical and peak batch sizes - so the tool is tailored to how you really schedule, not a generic template. It then walks you, prompt by prompt, through building the whole thing in an afternoon:

• A guided discovery interview the AI agent runs before it writes any code, plus a short spec it reads back for your thumbs-up.
• The data model for jobs, attributes, and the changeover matrix, shaped to your answers.
• The sequencing logic that groups compatible jobs and respects your hard constraints.
• The savings view - estimated setup saved versus the naive arrival order.
• The human approval gate, priority overrides, and the exported run list.
• A no-API fallback so you can run entirely on CSV in, CSV out today.

The governance it includes (this is the point)

This isn't a throwaway script - it's an internal tool you can trust on the floor:

• Login so only your team can use it.
• Row-level security so each plant or organization only ever sees its own jobs and matrix.
• A complete audit trail - who imported, who re-sequenced, who approved, and when.
• A human-in-the-loop approval gate - the AI proposes a sequence, a scheduler reviews and approves, and only an approved sequence becomes the official run list.
• Duplicate guards keyed on your job/WO number so the same job can't be sequenced twice.

Who it's for

Schedulers and line leaders on changeover-heavy lines - paint shops, extrusion and printing lines, food production with allergen clean-outs, injection molding - who want to stop losing the shift to avoidable setup and turn their sequencing instinct into a repeatable, reviewable tool.

You've got this - paste the first prompt and let the agent interview you.