Benefits of a Production Planning
Creating a production planning is often quite a task. It's the art of planning production so that deadlines are met within the available time and resources. When done effectively, it will help you with:
- Understanding what you can realistically achieve with your available time and capacity;
- Avoiding taking on more work than you can handle;
- Creating a healthy balance between sales and production;
- Preventing your own staff from not knowing what to do;
- Being able to react proactively.
Time is the only resource companies cannot buy, yet they often waste it or do not use it effectively. With a solid production planning, you consider what you want to achieve in a given period.
It's important to effectively and visually manage the planning. This provides you with an overview, offers flexibility, and helps prevent mistakes. With an effective planning, you don't waste time, but actually gain time.
What is production planning?
Production planning refers to the process of systematically organizing and coordinating various production activities within a company. The goal is to optimize production capacity and maximize efficiency. The planning takes into account factors such as expected sales, orders, available materials, lead times, workforce, and machine capacity.
What to consider in your production planning?
When starting with production planning, knowledge of the company, including its business processes and resources, is of utmost importance. Without this knowledge, production planning is inherently inefficient. Therefore, ensure that this information is available before drafting a production plan.
1. Define your production process
The work to be produced may pass through a single production step, but often, there are multiple different operations involved. So, carefully determine the potential production steps the products can go through and the specific characteristics of these steps. Our tip: diagram the process to make it visual.
2. Production capacity of employees and machines
Having insight into your production capacity is essential for creating a good production plan. Based on your production capacity, you can accurately schedule your orders and ensure all hours are well utilized.
With vPlan, you can visualize the capacity of your employees, machines, and spaces.
3. Incorporate sufficient buffer time
To accommodate any delays, it's important to include buffer times in your production planning. For example, when materials are delivered late or when your employees fall ill. After all, you don't want these issues to disrupt your entire planning.
4. Determine the source for your production orders
vPlan can be used without integration, but more often, we see vPlan being integrated with an ERP or accounting software. If you already use an ERP, it's a good source to enrich the planning in vPlan. Make sure all data in your ERP is available to fill the planning effectively. Consider up-to-date bills of materials with operations or specific date fields, such as promised delivery date.
5. Define roles and tasks
By assigning roles and tasks to your employees and machines, everyone knows what is expected of them, thereby preventing confusion and duplicate work. Additionally, digitizing the planning can also be implemented in production management. With vPlan Go, employees can see and perform all planned work.
Production Planning Methods
In the manufacturing sector, there are many different methods and trends. Some examples include Quick Response Management (QRM) and Lean Manufacturing. QRM focuses on scheduling production as late as possible. This way, expectations regarding lead times and capacity are more realistic, and the lead time is shortened. Additionally, Lean Manufacturing is also a trend in the manufacturing sector. With Lean Manufacturing, the focus is primarily on preventing waste, both of materials and of working hours or capacity. Both of these methods aim to ensure that production planning does not hinder, but rather promotes, the smoothness and accuracy of the manufacturing industry.
How to plan your production in vPlan?
Taking the fictional company Production & Co. as an example. They produce various types of furniture for individuals.
1. Create phases in your planning board
Orders from Production & Co. often go through the same production process, namely Preparation, Production, and Assembly. We add these phases to the planning board.
2. Add operations to your planning board
For each phase, we add an operation. By adding operations to the phases, orders are directed through the correct production process during planning. Additionally, you can register time on the operations.
3. Add employees/machines to your planning board
Production & Co. employs staff and utilizes machines to create end products. Employees, machines, and spaces are referred to as resources in vPlan. Add your resources to your planning board and link them to the phase in which they are present. By adding resources and activities to your planning board, you can visualize capacity.
4. Determine your statuses
Next, let's look at the statuses in the planning board. Orders at Production & Co. can be Open, then they are taken In Progress, and finally Completed.
5. Add orders to your planning board
Now that we've set up the planning board, we can add Production & Co.'s orders to it. To do this, we create cards. Each card can include operations, resources, and many other fields and pieces of information. For example, work instructions or drawings.
6. Determine your overview
vPlan offers four different views: list view, calendar view, kanban view, and timeline view. You can easily switch between these views and add useful filters. This allows you to precisely visualize what is important to you. Manage statuses, delivery dates, and capacity effectively.
vPlan has many more capabilities. You can add checklists, extra fields such as address and date, automations, formulas, and labels, among other features.
7. Manage the shop floor
A plan is nothing without execution. With vPlan, you can easily and quickly manage your production floor. With vPlan Go, you give your team the ability to handle orders quickly and easily. They can track statuses, record important information, track time, perform quality controls, and communicate. This way, you say goodbye to paper work orders and keep the planning up to date in real-time.
Want to know more or see it in action? It's always possible to contact us. Or watch our webinar: 'Mastering Your Production'.