Production scheduling: from work orders to a dated sequence
A plan is only useful once it becomes a sequence the floor can run. This guide covers scheduling work orders on finite machine capacity — setting order and resource priority, sequencing operations, and laying jobs out on a DayPilot Gantt board — plus the planned order-wise schedule, re-sequencing when priorities change, and why scheduling against real availability beats a wall planner.
Machine capacity planning explained
Before you promise a date, you have to know the work will fit. This guide covers machine loading — the daily load on each machine, loading as a percentage of capacity, the pending load from released work, and projected availability — and how a machine loading report lets planners level the load, spot overloads early and plan realistic dates instead of over-promising. Includes finite versus infinite loading and how capacity feeds scheduling.
OEE and efficiency tracking on the shop floor
A plan you never measure against reality never improves. This guide covers tracking plan versus actual — booking actual start and end times, cycle and setting times, OK and not-OK production, and breakdown and idle time by shift, machine and operator, often by scanning barcodes — and rolling it up into utilization, operator and machine efficiency, and OEE dashboards, so the biggest recurring loss of availability, speed or quality names itself.
What is production planning software? The complete pillar guide
The full educational guide — what production planning, MRP and PPC software is, the sales plan and demand entry, BOM explosion and netting, buy-versus-make split into purchase requisitions and work orders, process sheets and routing, machine loading and finite scheduling, and plan-vs-actual, utilization and OEE.
Knowledge base — straight answers to how-to questions
Sales and production plan, BOM explosion and netting, process sheets and routing, machine loading and scheduling, plan-vs-actual and OEE, and suite integration — answered in plain language.