Production Plan Template / Software?

[BusterBloodvessel]

Hi All,

I'm looking for any recommendatiosn on something to help keep an eye on production for us mainly around capacity. I'm not sure if it could be spreadsheet based or possibly something like MS Project (but I've never ever used it) or specialist software... but I don't need something hugely over complicated, I don't need detailed reporting, integration with warehouse planning or CRM's or BOM's or anything else....

Essentially we've been given production capacity by a factory, using round figures for ease they can produce 15,000 pieces a day (so 450k a month) and will guarantee us priority in a month up to a maximum 250,000 pieces, leaving them 200,000 pieces capacity for their other customers. Our 250,000 capacity will be split between multiple brands/orders that we place on the factory. Factory production starts 21 days from artwork approval as there's 21 days for packaging production. Then obviously production takes as long as it takes, if it's 30,000 pieces it's 2 days etc.

Each time we place an order I just want to be able to add it to a list/spreadsheet/chart/whatever with the following;

Order No
Artwork ready date
Order Total Qty

I want it to then hopefully plan out the production start date (21 days from artwork) and then calculate the total number of day(s) required for production. But it then needs to either

(a) Flag up if a day is exceeding 15,000 pieces (e.g. if an order is placed on the 1st of the month for 60,000 pcs - 4 days, and then another order placed on the 2nd for 15,000, it would expect to start production on the 22nd and 23rd respectively. But would need to flag on the 23rd that it was trying to make 15,000 on 2 orders so total 30,000 and not possible). If it flagged this up we could manually adjust the production start date
(b) Even better, to automatically adjust as per the above so plans to production at the next available slot

Ideally we'd then need the same per month so flag/stop if we hit 250,000 total in the month as we'd then have to wait until the start of the next month.

As I say we don't need big integrations with the actual production/factory floor, reports etc. It's just something we can visually monitor and keep an eye on. We're hitting maximum capacity with the plant so need to be advising our customers when they place orders that "we don't have a production slot until x date" or even in advance that production is getting full, do they want to book space etc.

Sorry for the long read but hopefully what I'm after makes sense - has anyone any experience or suggestions?

 

[cockypea]

Totally get what you're after – that sweet spot between “not a beast of a system” and “still smarter than just winging it.” Honestly, I’d be tempted to build this in Google Sheets first, just to map out the logic and stress test it. Conditional formatting for overload days, maybe a few helper columns for auto-shifting if capacity’s breached. No frills, but flexible. If it works, you could always port it into Airtable or Notion later for nicer visuals. Curious though – how many active orders do you juggle at peak?

 

[DaveITGuy]

my background or domain is actually a erp guy and am quite familiar with manufacturing side of the erp, I am however trying out a side hustle to do some smaller scale IT work for local businesses.

just top of my head if you want something setup cheap and maintainable by yourself you can consider following some of the below designs. be it on a spreadsheet or some other off the shelf software, while you dont use the functionality of big production planning softwares you atleast have to think like one and emulate it.

heres what can be done

first below are the general assumptions

• When production will start for each order (21-day lead after artwork approval)
• Whether you’ve exceeded daily capacity (15,000 pcs/day)
• Whether you’ve exceeded your monthly capacity (250,000 pcs/month)
• A way to automatically slot orders to the next available day if there’s a clash (say over cap)
• A visual calendar view so you can see where the bottlenecks are. (like which dates are over cap thus need reshuffle and alert the factory)

Approach is to use an excel with 2 sheets, 1 as the order entry to store the order no. artwork ready date total order qty, Start Date(result), End Date (result), Total Days Req (result), then another sheet as a planning board base, have the cells represent each day of the production so something like day 1 to day 31.

then you will need some excel knowledge to perform the below logic

• Start Date(result) = artwork ready date + 21 days
• Total Days Req (result) = total order qty / 15000
• fill the calendar which is the hardest part i guess for non-coder but try chatgpt for a visual basic code/macro to achieve If any day > 15,000, either flag red or push that order’s start to the next available slot.
• then for the monthly total logic just do a sum of all the days 1-31

now if you want more something more robust (with a database for logging and history / order tracking etc) automated and stream line and still not break the bank can try to do it with N8N or make.com platforms so that the orders coming in and communications going out can be automated further.

hit me a dm if need more advise

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Look at WebERP - I used this just for their accounts system many years ago, but didn't scratch the surface of its manufacturing features.

It's Open Source and self hosted.

 

[SpriteScenes]

Hi BusterBloodvessel. I've sent you a PM.