Production planning systems
Capacity, skills, shifts and machine availability modelled as data rather than held in a spreadsheet that assumes infinite capacity and is out of date before the week is out.
What a production planning system has to model
Production and capacity planning
Real capacity by line, cell and shift, including the setup and changeover time that a spreadsheet silently omits and that determines whether a plan is achievable.
Machine and resource availability
Planned maintenance, known downtime and shared resources reflected in the plan, so a schedule does not assume equipment that will not be there.
Scenario and what-if planning
Comparing alternatives before committing — taking the rush order, adding a shift, moving a delivery — with the knock-on effects visible rather than guessed.
Bottleneck and constraint modelling
Identifying the constraint that actually governs throughput, which is frequently not the one people assume it is.
Material availability checks
Plans validated against incoming material and lead times, because a schedule that ignores supply is a wish rather than a plan.
Manager dashboards
Plan against actual while the week is still running, so the response happens during the week rather than in the review afterwards.
Don’t see your challenge here? Talk to us about your project
It is accurate the day it is made, and owned by one person
Planning spreadsheets share three properties: they assume capacity that does not exist, they are maintained by a single person, and they are stale within days. Everybody knows this and everybody keeps using them, because the alternative has usually been an ERP module nobody could adapt.
Modelling capacity, skills and availability as data makes the plan shareable, testable and current. It also makes the constraints explicit, which is often the first time an organisation sees where its throughput is genuinely limited.
- Real capacity
- Setup and changeover time included, not assumed away.
- Shared
- Not dependent on one person being available.
- Current
- Updated from what actually happened on the floor.
- Scenario-capable
- Alternatives compared before committing.
- Constraint-aware
- The real bottleneck identified, not the assumed one.
- Material-checked
- Validated against incoming supply and lead times.
Planning and management of the manufacturing process
We built a unified project management system supporting a production planning capability, connecting the parts of the manufacturing process that had previously been coordinated by hand. The value came from making capacity and commitments visible in one place — which is what allows a delivery date to be promised with confidence.
Common questions
Do we need to replace our ERP?
Generally not. Planning often works best as a system alongside the ERP, reading master data and orders from it and writing back commitments. Replacing an ERP to improve planning is rarely proportionate to the problem.
How accurate does the capacity model need to be?
Accurate enough to be trusted, which is a lower bar than perfect. We usually start with the constraint resources and the changeover times, since those drive most of the error, and refine from there.
Will planners actually use it instead of the spreadsheet?
Only if it is faster for them than the spreadsheet is. That means the common operations — moving a job, adding a shift, testing a rush order — have to take seconds, and it is the main thing we design around.
Let's talk about your operations
Tell us which spreadsheet is currently holding the plan together and where delivery dates come from today. We will come back with an honest read on the capacity model, the ERP integration involved, and what a realistic first phase looks like.
