Production planning is about finding a good balance between market needs and production capacity. The planning process is one of the most important functions of production and a poorly functioning one not only causes the company to lose customers and business opportunities, but also exhausts staff and damages quality.
However, a well-functioning planning process can be a good tool for minimizing high production-related costs, such as materials, maintenance-related stops in the production line and energy consumption.
But what does production planning actually mean? It is a broad concept and can include long-term planning, detailed planning of production materials and operations as well as daily coordination on the production floor. The main goal is to come up with the right number of products to be produced at the right quality and on time. There is a lot to consider before getting there! The planner is the spider in the web and needs to have an overview of production flows, stock levels, customer orders, internal lead times, while taking into account resources such as staff and machinery. Based on this information, production orders are planned and the production schedule is communicated to stakeholders. A follow-up is then carried out to ensure that the planning has been followed with the desired result.
From challenges to competitive advantage
The most common challenges customers come to us with are difficulties in being flexible enough in their planning process to deal with changing circumstances. Demands for fast response times are increasing, production processes are becoming more complex and competition is intensifying. This means that producers need to keep up with changes in the world around them and development journeys. The ability to quickly replan and to easily create different scenarios and measure them against each other is therefore an important advantage of a planning tool.
Thanks to the ability to simulate and visualize events, a production planner can detect, for example, material shortages in good time and have a chance to act in time. The result is better compliance with promised delivery times and more efficient production with less downtime. With the right planning support, you can also promise the right delivery dates to customers and proactively update them on any changes, which strengthens customer relationships and provides a huge competitive advantage in today's fast-paced market.
Personalisation and Excellence Solutions
A common scenario we see with our customers is that there is a well-established production process and administrative work that relies on ERP systems. When the business systems are not sufficient, separate side solutions are often made, for example in Excel. This creates problems with keeping documents updated in an ever-changing production process and limits communication with other parts of the organization. It is also common for one person to hold all the information and spend a lot of time compiling lists and reports in order to maintain some form of transparency with the rest of the organization.
With a planning system, all information is easily accessible and can be shared in the form of dynamic and customized reports. The system also provides the opportunity to produce statistics for evaluation or improvement purposes, which, among other things, allows you to work more proactively in your planning process. With less manual work, the production planner has more time to follow up on the planning, detect bottlenecks, make necessary changes in real time and prevent possible resource shortages in the long term.
The different planning needs of the sectors
There is some difference between different industries and needs related to planning. If you look at bulk producers, for example, they have historically been good at acquiring support for their planning, to optimize their productivity. It's often about working on the margins and making sure you get the right volumes. Discrete manufacturing operations, however, have not been as quick to adopt digital tools.
If you are a manufacturing company in need of improved production planning, you should start by doing an internal survey and looking at your way of working. Then it is important to focus on the planning process that has the best potential for improvement and put your energy where it hurts the most. A good start for those companies that want to succeed with a planning tool is to begin with a workshop where you go through the possibilities and limitations. In this way, the best measures for your own planning process are identified.
Profits of companies with production planning
We have seen clear benefits and improvements in companies that have started using production planning systems. For example, one of our customers has increased its delivery accuracy from 86% to 98%. In that case, it faced challenges with long response times, both in planning and coordination in production and with other departments. Today, they have a good overview of production, they can predict and avoid late deliveries and have created a proactive way of working that is today a great advantage for them and in the long run increases their competitiveness.
