Have you ever wondered how manufacturing companies plan their production? How they know exactly which resources to deploy, which people to schedule, and how to meet their deadlines? The secret is in effective production planning. But even the best planners encounter challenges. In this blog, we discuss the most common challenges and how to overcome them. 

In this article:  

1. Challenge 1: Lots of manual work
2. Challenge 2: Budget monitoring
3. Challenge 3: No insight into capacity
4. Challenge 4: Time recording
5. Challenge 5: No insight into project progress
6. Challenge 6: Difficult cooperation
7. Challenge 7: No insight into deadlines
8. Conclusion

Challenge 1: A lot of manual work  

Many manufacturing companies still rely on manual processes such as spreadsheets for their planning. This can lead to errors, inefficiencies and wasted time. With vPlan, it is possible to integrate all your systems, eliminating the need to manually transfer data. This prevents manual errors and saves a lot of time.  

Challenge 2: Budget monitoring 

One of the biggest challenges in production planning is budget monitoring. Without proper insight into hours, a project can quickly go over budget. 

Accurately planning activities and making pre-calculations can be complex. Mistakes can quickly lead to major delays and budget overruns. 

With vPlan, you can easily monitor budgets and track hours. That way, you get a grip on your costs for raw materials, labour, machinery, maintenance, et cetera. You can generate reports to get a detailed overview of hours, which helps you stay within budget. This allows you to take timely action if overruns are imminent. 

Challenge 3: No insight into capacity 

Scheduling people and managing their availability is a crucial task within production planning. 

 vPlan provides a real-time overview of employee availability. You can put available hours per person in vPlan, taking into account leave or standard days off. This helps you plan efficiently without overburdening staff. The pre-calculated hours automatically take into account the rosters of your resources, so you always know exactly what your capacity is. 

Challenge 4: Time recording 

Tracking hours is essential for budget monitoring, but is often very time-consuming. WithPlan's built-in hour recording, employees can easily record their hours worked, either manually or with a timer function.  

Challenge 5: No insight into project progress 

Without clear insight into project progress, it can be difficult to meet deadlines and stay within budget. vPlan's dashboard gives you real-time insight into project progress. You can view the status of each task, see which deadlines are coming up, and take immediate action if delays are imminent. This helps you stay on track and spot problems early. 

Challenge 6: Struggling collaboration 

Effective collaboration is essential in production planning. Lack of communication leads to misunderstandings and mistakes. vPlan makes collaboration easy with shared projects and tasks. Team members can leave notes, share files and communicate in real time to improve collaboration.   

Challenge 7: No understanding of deadlines 

Missing deadlines can be a disaster for production companies. Therefore, it is essential to always have a clear overview of deadlines. vPlan has a handy functionality that alerts you when deadlines are approaching. This ensures that you are always aware of important milestones and can react in time to avoid problems. This way, you always stay on track. 

Conclusion 

Production planning doesn't have to be chaos. With vPlan, you can overcome the most common challenges through automated processes, real-time insights and other useful functionalities.   

Want to discover how vPlan can improve your production planning? Start a free trial today. With vPlan, production planning not only becomes easier, but also more effective and enjoyable!