Production Scheduling

Production scheduling software for real pharma complexity

PLAIO builds the week around changeovers, cleaning, shifts and downtime, then replans it when something breaks. Your ERP has the orders. It has no idea what the blender can do on Tuesday.

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54 orders and six lines to fill this week

Tablets, creams and syrups are queued for dispensing, granulation and blending. Each one has its own routing.

PROD Production Planner Gantt with six lines across dispensing, granulation and blending, and a Production Orders panel listing 54 unscheduled orders

One slipped batch can undo the week

In many plants the schedule is a spreadsheet or a whiteboard, and one person knows how to change it. A rush order arrives and that person rebuilds the week by hand, hoping nothing downstream breaks. PLAIO is for pharma companies scheduling their own plants and for contract manufacturers (CDMOs) running lines for clients.

Hand-built schedules usually break on the small rules.

Put a cream before a tablet on the same blender and you need changeover time. Granulation must start within a set window after dispensing. On Thursday morning a calibration check takes a line out. None of these rules is hard on its own.

Multiply them across six lines and a week of orders and nobody can check them by eye. PLAIO checks every job and flags the one that won't fit, with the line and the day it clashes on.

Why it matters:

A conflict found at a desk on Monday costs a few minutes. Found on the shop floor on Tuesday, it can cost a batch or a delivery date.

PLAIO flags the changeover you missed: a week of jobs on six production lines with two downtimes; the Tuesday tablet job on Blending Line 1 is flagged Not Enough Changeover, 45 minutes needed and 10 planned after a hydrocortisone cream

Inside PLAIO's Production Planner

Gantt with one production order ringed as it moves from a dispensing line to granulation and then blending

Schedule to the real routing

Every product takes its own route through your stages and lines. Setup, run and cleaning times are set per line, changeovers depend on what ran before, and each step can have a minimum and maximum wait.

Auto Schedule menu with Generate Scenario Alternatives highlighted for three selected production orders

Auto schedule selected orders

Pick some production orders and PLAIO places them. Want options? Generate scenario alternatives that trade late orders against changeover time, and keep whichever suits the week.

Gantt with a scheduled maintenance block and a calibration check, with production jobs placed around them

Replan when a line stops

Add the downtime and PLAIO can smart reschedule the affected orders around it. Shift patterns, planned maintenance and calibration checks make up the calendar underneath every schedule.

How production scheduling works in PLAIO

Scenario menu with optimizer alternatives beside the active Main Schedule, above a Gantt job showing its line, start and stop time

From order to jobs

Production orders come from the supply plan, each with an item, a quantity and a required delivery date. Schedule one and you get a job per routing step, on a named line with a start and stop time. Drag a job to another line in the same stage, or to a different time, and the checks rerun.

Drafts beside the live schedule

Try the rush order or the slipped batch in a draft scenario next to the published schedule, then publish the version you want. Until then everyone reads the active schedule. Published schedules are never edited in place.

Check the load first

Utilization per line compares scheduled hours with the capacity left after shifts and downtime. For the months ahead, the rough-cut Capacity Plan spreads forecast demand across each resource, so a bottleneck shows up while you can still do something about it.

Explore PLAIO Pharma Constraints
For heads of operations

A schedule the floor can run

  • Each job is checked for changeovers, waits, downtime, material readiness and its delivery date. Problems are listed per scenario.
  • The site works from one published schedule. Drafts stay separate until someone publishes.
  • Utilization per line and a rough-cut capacity plan, for when someone asks about a second shift or a contract manufacturer.

Why it matters:

One slipped batch puts the week at risk. PLAIO shows which orders it pushes late, on which line, and why.

Explore Exception Management
Dark production Gantt for two days across six lines with a maintenance block no job overlaps, above a scenario menu where the locked Main Schedule is the active one

Production Scheduling FAQ

It schedules. Each job has a line, a start and a stop time, and follows the item's routing through your stages. PLAIO checks it against setup, run and cleaning times, sequence-dependent changeovers, minimum and maximum waits, shifts and downtime. Auto Schedule places the orders you select. Anything that breaks a rule appears as an exception.

Add the downtime, or drag the affected jobs to another line in the same stage or another time, and the checks rerun. Adding a downtime also offers smart reschedule. PLAIO unschedules every job from the downtime start onwards and reruns the optimizer to fit those orders back in. If you want to compare first, do it in a draft scenario where the floor can't see it.

Yes. Generate Scenario Alternatives lets the optimizer place your orders across the whole Gantt. Each result is saved as a new scenario showing its late orders and total changeover time, and the planner picks the trade-off. You can aim at late orders, earliness, changeover time or missed orders. More on the method in AI, ML & Optimization.

Production orders are the supply plan's orders for each shop floor. The schedule uses the same quantities and required delivery dates the supply planner sees. Once the plan allocates components to an order, PLAIO flags any job whose material won't be ready for the step that needs it. Further out, the rough-cut Capacity Plan spreads demand across each resource by month.

Yes, with Reservations. Block time on a line for a product family, say tablets on the first dispensing line for a week, and Auto Schedule puts matching orders into that block. Overbooked or overlapping reservations get flagged. Reservations is an optional module that we switch on per customer.

Both. Pharma companies use it for their own plants, and contract manufacturers (CDMOs) use it for the lines they run for clients. If you outsource to a CMO, you can model its line as a separate shop floor next to your in-house ones, with its own stages, resources, downtimes and scenarios.

Keep production on schedule.

We'll load a week of production orders into the Production Planner and show you what it flags.

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Connect the Dots Across Your Planning Process

Plan upstream with accuracy.

Feed production with precise, market-aligned forecasts using Demand Planning Software

Demand

Balance demand and capacity.

Connect schedules to full-scope supply plans using our Supply Planning Software.

Supply

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