Most of the day’s output is decided before dawn, from memory.
Production planning turns confirmed orders and your regular daily quantities into a plan: what to make, how much, on which machine or in which oven, and in what order. Material short for Thursday shows up on Monday, early enough to buy it. The floor works from a screen instead of a guess.
A bakery decides at five in the morning how many trays go in. A garment unit decides on Monday which line runs which style. Both decide from memory, and both are caught by the one order that was promised on a phone call and never written down.
The plan is built from what is actually committed: orders on hand, the quantities that go out every day anyway, and what the store already holds. Move a job because a machine is down, and the screen shows what it pushes into Friday.
What production planning does.
Plan from confirmed orders
Orders accepted for the week come in with their promised dates. Nothing is planned against an enquiry that has not been agreed.
The quantities that repeat
Counter stock, standing orders and regular route quantities are added to the plan without anybody typing them again each morning.
Capacity in your own units
Trays, machine hours, line shifts or kilos. The oven fills on the screen before it fills in the kitchen.
Shortages before the run
Material needed against material on the rack, listed a few days out, so the purchase call goes out in time.
Reschedule and see what moves
Shift one job and the ones behind it move with it. You see which customer needs the telephone call.
Planned against actually made
Yesterday’s plan beside yesterday’s output, with the reason for the gap written by the person who knows it.
The people who open this every day.
Production in-charge
Lays out the day or the week and adjusts it when a machine stops.
Storekeeper
Sees what has to be ready before the shift starts, and what has to be bought.
Owner
Reads how much of the plan is being met, and where the same excuse keeps appearing.
It is one part of a system, not an island.
A module earns its place by what it passes to the next one. These are the connections we set up most often.
- Bill of materials
- Work orders
- Stock
- Purchase orders
- Sales orders
Products that include it.
How we would put it in.
Questions owners ask about production planning.
Do you have this already built somewhere?
Yes, in our Bakery Management System, where the daily bake plan is built from confirmed cake and bulk orders together with the usual counter quantities. For other trades it is fitted to your own units and shifts.
We make only to order. Is planning worth it?
It is, though a simpler version. Make-to-order shops mostly need the sequence and the material call, not a forecast. Start with the shortage list and leave the rest.
Is a diary still enough?
If one person plans and that person is always there, a diary works. It stops working when he is on leave, or when three customers are told the same Thursday.
Where does the stock figure come from?
From your own stock records, or from Tally where the store is kept there. The plan reads the balance; it does not ask anyone to type it in twice.
Businesses that ask for this.
Modules that work with it.
Tell us how you handle production planning today.
A spreadsheet, a register or another system: say which, and we will tell you plainly what is worth changing.
- No obligation
- We reply the same working day
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