Production Planner Overview

Who uses this

Production Planner is built for two personas:

• Production Planner schedules jobs, manages changeovers, and sequences work across resources.
• Plant Manager monitors throughput, downtime, and schedule adherence.

What it does

Production Planner takes production orders and schedules them across your shop floor resources. You can schedule manually with drag and drop or let the auto scheduler handle placement. The system enforces real-world constraints (shift patterns, downtimes, changeovers, stage sequencing) and surfaces conflicts automatically.

Key concepts

• Shop Floor: top-level container for all production activity. One per physical facility.
• Stage: a step in the manufacturing process (e.g. Mixing, Filling, Packaging). Stages have a defined processing sequence.
• Resource: a machine or workstation within a stage that performs the work.
• Production Order: a firm order to manufacture a specific quantity of an item by a delivery date.
• Campaign: a reserved time block on a resource for a single product family. Contains jobs. Tracks utilisation.
• Job: a single production run for one order on one resource. A job moves through four phases: Changeover, Setup, Processing, Cleaning.
• Version: a saved snapshot of a schedule. Compare alternatives before committing.
• Exception: an automatically detected scheduling conflict (late order, campaign overlap, capacity overrun, etc.).

Module layout

The Production Planner screen has these areas:

• Orders Panel (right side): lists all production orders with scheduling status. Drag orders from here onto the Gantt.
• Gantt Chart (centre): the main scheduling interface. Left column shows stages and resources. Timeline area shows campaigns, jobs, and downtimes.
• Exceptions: alerts for scheduling conflicts. Visible in the Exceptions worksheet.
• Version Selector: switch between schedule versions.

The Gantt chart supports two detail levels:

• Campaign View shows campaigns as blocks. Better for high-level planning.
• Jobs View shows individual jobs inside campaigns. Better for detailed scheduling.

Multiple colour schemes are available. Colour events by product family, product, scheduling status, or resource.

Reading the chart

Campaigns appear as boxes displaying the product family name. Each groups production jobs for one product family on one resource. A coloured dot and the product family name are displayed on each campaign.

Jobs appear as bars nested inside campaigns or directly on the Gantt chart if they are not part of a campaign.

Downtimes appear as blocked-out time ranges on the timeline. These represent maintenance, cleaning, or other unavailable periods.

Exceptions: campaigns or jobs with scheduling conflicts get a red border. Check the details to understand the issue.

Hover over any campaign or job to see a tooltip with product family, order ID, due date, status, quantity, and time range. Double-click a campaign to see its full details including scheduled jobs.

Reading order

If you are new to the Production Planner, read the subpages in this order:

1. Shop Floor Setup: how the system is configured before scheduling.
2. Scheduling Modes: how orders get onto the schedule (manual and auto).
3. Optimizer Objectives: the five objectives the optimizer can balance.
4. Versions & Scenarios: saving and comparing schedule alternatives.