Production planning and control software that closes the loop
Planning decides what should happen. Control checks what did happen and corrects the plan. Most small plants have some version of the first half and almost none of the second, which is why the plan drifts away from the floor by Tuesday afternoon.
The production planning and control loop
- Plan: orders, routings and capacity become a finite capacity schedule
- Release: each work center gets its queue for the shift (Plant plan and above)
- Execute: operators start and finish jobs, with actual quantities (Plant plan and above)
- Measure: planned against actual time and quantity, per operation (Plant plan and above)
- Correct: late jobs, breakdowns and new orders reschedule the rest of the week
ProductionPlanning.ai runs the whole loop in one place, so the plan the office sees and the work the floor does stay the same thing.
Planning: production and planning systems that know capacity
The plan is only worth controlling if it was possible in the first place. ProductionPlanning.ai builds it with finite capacity: each operation placed on a work center inside its shifts, with setup times, earliest due date first, or in the order of the sequencing rule you choose on the Plant plan and above. See how production planning and scheduling works.
Control: what the floor reports back
- Jobs started and finished from the floor, with timestamps
- Actual quantities and scrap per job
- Downtime marked on the work center, with the expected return time
- Operations running longer than planned flagged while they run
- Daily comparison of plan and actual per work center
The detail of the floor view is on the shop floor scheduling software page.
Correction without rebuilding the plan
When the floor falls behind, the rest of the schedule moves with it automatically, and the orders that now miss their date appear on the late list. The planner decides what to do about them: overtime, an alternative machine, a split batch or a call to the customer. Nothing has to be retyped.
Manufacturing process planning software that learns from actual times
Every job finished on the floor records its real duration. Over a few weeks, the comparison shows which routings are optimistic and which are padded, so the times in your process plan get closer to reality and the schedule gets more accurate every week.
Close the loop between the office and the floor
Create your account and publish your first schedule to the floor this week.
Your data stays yours. Export or delete it any time. No card to try the demo.