Production Planning
For the planner who has to publish a shift plan on Friday and knows that the spreadsheet’s “84% loaded” is not the same thing as a plan that will actually run.
It pulls the demand forecast and open orders, checks capacity, constraints and material availability, sequences the week to minimise changeovers with a deterministic campaign heuristic, and drafts the shift plan for the planner to publish.
How it works
- Pulls the demand forecast and open orders.
- Checks work-centre capacity, constraints and material availability (deterministic).
- Sequences for changeovers with a campaign heuristic (deterministic).
- Drafts the shift plan for the planner to publish.
Example scenario
“84% loaded, run it by due date.” Three things that number hides:
- The naive due-date sequence alternates product families — pump, valve, pump, valve — and burns more than ten hours in changeovers. Run-hours utilisation is not a plan.
- One committed order is material-gated until Wednesday.
- Between the changeovers and the gate, the naive sequence finishes a committed customer order late.
The engine reports the naive miss, produces a campaign sequence that protects both committed orders, drops the changeover hours, and names the material gate in the escalation.
What you bring
The demand plan and open orders, work-centre capacity, the changeover matrix and material availability. JSON or spreadsheet exports both work.
Boundaries
The shift plan is a draft for the planner to review and publish. Sequencing uses a campaign heuristic rather than an optimisation solver.