A clean, ready-to-use spreadsheet to plan your jobs machine by machine — what runs where, in what order, by when. Built for shop owners and PPC engineers who plan production by hand today and want a format that actually holds up.
If you run a manufacturing unit, you already keep some kind of plan — a diary, a whiteboard, a WhatsApp message to the supervisor, or a spreadsheet that one person maintains. It works until the day two urgent orders land on the same machine, a job overruns, or the person who keeps the sheet is on leave. Then the plan and the shop floor quietly drift apart.
This template gives you a machine-wise production schedule: one row per job, tied to the machine or line that will make it, with a planned start, a planned end, a priority and the setup and cycle times behind those dates. Because every job names its machine, you can sort the sheet by machine and instantly see what each one is doing now and next — and spot when you have promised the same machine to two jobs at once.
It is deliberately simple. There is nothing to install and no account to create. Download it, delete the sample rows, and start typing your own jobs.
The template has one job per row and ten columns. Here is what to put in each, in plain terms.
| Column | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Job/Order No | A short unique code for the job or works order (for example WO-1024). This is how you and the shop floor refer to the same piece of work. |
| Part | The part or product being made. Keep the name consistent with your drawing or item master so there is no confusion on the floor. |
| Qty | How many pieces this job must produce. Quantity drives run time, so it is the number that decides how long a machine is tied up. |
| Machine/Line | The specific machine, work centre or line that will run the job. This column is what makes the schedule machine-wise instead of a flat list. |
| Planned Start | The date and time you intend the job to start on that machine. Enter it once you know the machine is free and the material is ready. |
| Planned End | When the job should finish — roughly the start plus setup time plus cycle time for the whole quantity. This is your promise date for the next operation. |
| Priority | How urgent the job is (1 - High, 2 - Medium, 3 - Low). Sort by priority within a machine to decide what runs first when two jobs compete. |
| Setup Time | The one-off changeover time before the job runs — fixtures, tooling and first-piece approval. Kept in minutes. |
| Cycle Time | The time to make one piece once the machine is running, in minutes per piece. Cycle time times quantity is the bulk of your run time. |
| Status | Where the job stands: Planned, In Progress, On Hold, Delayed or Completed. Update it daily so the schedule tells the truth. |
The header row is bold and frozen, so it stays in view as you scroll, and the Priority and Status columns have drop-downs so everyone uses the same words. Three sample rows are shaded so you can see the shape of a filled schedule — delete them before you start.
You can have a working machine-wise plan in one sitting. Follow these steps in order.
Click the download button to get the .xlsx, then open it in Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice. The three shaded rows are samples — delete them once you understand the layout.
For every order you have to make, add a row with the Job/Order No, the Part and the Qty. One row per job keeps the schedule easy to sort and filter.
Put the machine or line that will run the job in the Machine/Line column. This is what turns a job list into a machine-wise schedule — you can now see the load on each machine.
Enter the Setup Time and Cycle Time, then use them to work out a realistic Planned Start and Planned End (setup time plus cycle time times quantity). Now your dates are grounded in how long the work actually takes.
Set each job’s Priority, then sort the rows by Machine/Line and Planned Start. The order you see is the sequence to run — the highest-priority, earliest-due job first on each machine.
Change the Status to Planned, In Progress, On Hold, Delayed or Completed as work moves. A daily update is what keeps the schedule honest and tells you the moment a job is slipping.
A flat job list answers “what do we have to make?” It does not answer the two questions that actually decide whether you ship on time: on which machine, and in what order? Capacity lives in machines, not in the order book. Two customers can both be promised next Tuesday, but if both their parts need the same VMC, one of them is going to be late — and a job list will never show you that clash.
Planning machine-wise makes the conflict visible. When every job names its machine and its planned times, you can sort by machine and read the load like a queue: this job, then that one, then the next. If a machine is over-committed, you see it before you promise the date, not after you miss it. Setup and cycle time keep the dates honest — a 5,000-piece job at 0.6 minutes a piece is fifty hours of running whether or not the plan admits it.
That is the whole idea behind this template: turn a wish-list of orders into a sequence each machine can actually run.
A spreadsheet is a genuinely good place to start, and for a handful of machines and a steady order book it may be all you ever need. But a spreadsheet has one hard limit: it does not recalculate itself. When a job slips by half a shift, when a machine breaks down, or when a rush order jumps the queue, nothing in the sheet moves. You re-type the dates by hand for every job behind the one that changed — and by the time you finish, something else has changed.
The other quiet problem is copies. The moment two people keep their own version, you have two schedules and no single truth. The supervisor works from one, planning from another, and the argument at the end of the month is about whose sheet was right.
This is the point where manufacturers move to planning-and-scheduling software — often sold under the label APS, which in plain words simply means software that re-plans your jobs across machines the moment something changes. Instead of re-typing dates, you change one fact — a machine is down, an order moved — and every affected job re-sequences on its own, on one plan everyone shares.
That is exactly what Fast Planning Software does. It keeps the same machine-wise plan you have just built — jobs, machines, priority, setup and cycle time — but reads your live orders, BOM and stock, loads each machine on its real cycle time, and re-sequences the plan on a Gantt board the moment an order moves or a machine goes down. One plan, everyone on it, updating itself.
Yes. It is a direct, ungated download — no email, no sign-up, no watermark. Download the .xlsx, open it, edit the columns, add your own machines and jobs, and share it with your team. Use it for as long as it is useful to you.
A machine-wise schedule is a plan that lists every job against the specific machine or line that will make it, with a planned start and end time. Instead of one long to-do list, you can see what each machine is doing today and next, so two urgent jobs are not both promised to the same machine at the same hour.
Setup time is the one-off time to change over and set the machine before a job runs — fixturing, tooling, first-piece approval. Cycle time is the time to make one piece once the machine is running. Planned run time for a job is roughly setup time plus cycle time multiplied by quantity, which is how you work out a realistic planned end.
A to-do list tells you what to do but not on which machine or by when; a hand-drawn Gantt looks right until a job slips and every bar after it is wrong. This template keeps the machine, the times and the priority in columns you can sort and filter, so it is quicker to re-sequence than a picture — but you still update it by hand.
A spreadsheet is fine for a handful of machines and a stable order book. It stops keeping up when a job slips, a machine breaks down or a rush order lands — because the sheet does not recalculate. You re-type dates by hand, and every planner has a different copy. That is the point where teams move to planning-and-scheduling software (sometimes called APS — in plain words, software that re-plans your jobs across machines the moment something changes).
Yes. It is a standard .xlsx, so it opens in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc. The bold header row, the frozen top rows and the Priority and Status drop-downs carry across in Excel and LibreOffice; Google Sheets keeps the layout and you can re-add drop-downs with Data validation.
When you are ready to go beyond a spreadsheet, these pages pick up where the template leaves off.
Start with the free template today. When re-typing dates gets old, see the same plan run itself in Fast Planning — your parts, your machines, your schedule, in a 30-minute demo.
