Production planning software for small and mid sized manufacturers
Every feature in ProductionPlanning.ai exists for one job: a production plan that fits the capacity you really have, visible to everyone who needs it, and easy to change when the day changes. This page lists them all, grouped by the question each one answers.
What to make, and when: the production planning program
- Open order list with product, quantity, due date, priority and customer
- Routings per product: operations in sequence, work center, minutes per unit, setup time
- Alternative work centers per operation
- Bills of materials per product, used for shortage checks (Plant plan and above)
- Demand from forecasts alongside firm orders, kept separate on the plan (Plant plan and above)
- Import from spreadsheets and ERP exports, with column mapping you save once (Plant plan and above)
Read how demand enters the plan on the production forecasting software page, and how a weekly plan by product becomes a master production schedule.
Where and in what order: finite capacity scheduling
- Finite capacity per work center, per shift, per day
- Shift calendars with holidays, maintenance and planned downtime
- Setup and changeover times by product family, counted on the schedule
- Grouping of similar jobs to cut changeovers (Plant plan and above)
- Earliest due date on every plan, and a choice of sequencing rules: shortest operation first, customer priority (Plant plan and above)
- Forward scheduling from today, with a projected finish date for every order
- Gantt chart by work center and by order, with drag to move and automatic reflow
The engine behind this is described on the advanced planning and scheduling software page.
What will go wrong: late orders, bottleneck and shortages
- Late order list with the number of days each will miss by
- Bottleneck work center named for the period, with its utilisation
- Load per work center by day and by week, with overloads marked
- Material shortages per order, item, quantity and date needed (Plant plan and above)
- Plan versions: copy the schedule, change a rule or a shift, compare on time performance side by side (Plant plan and above)
For the load view in detail, see capacity planning software.
What is happening now: shop floor status (Plant plan and above)
- A queue per work center for the current shift, in schedule order
- Start and finish from a screen at the machine, a tablet or a phone
- Actual quantities and scrap recorded against the job
- Planned against actual time per operation, to correct routings
- Breakdown marked on the floor, rest of the week rescheduled in one click (the planner reschedules in one click on every plan)
More on the shop floor scheduling software page.
Who sees what: sharing, integrations and control
- Unlimited users on every plan
- Export of the schedule to your ERP (Plant plan and above)
- Export of all data as spreadsheets, on every plan
- Change history on every order and operation (Plant plan and above)
- Multi plant view and orders moved between plants (Group plan)
- API for orders, routings and schedules (Group plan)
- Single sign on, roles and permissions (Group plan), SAML and SCIM (Enterprise)
Manufacturing planning software built for plants without a planning department
ProductionPlanning.ai is built for plants with somewhere between a handful and a few hundred people, where planning is one person's job, or part of the plant manager's. It works the same way in a machine shop, a metal fabrication shop, a food plant or bakery and a job shop.
See the production planning tools work on a real week
Run the demo on the home page, or create your account and import your own orders.
Your data stays yours. Export or delete it any time. No card to try the demo.