Production planning is the backbone of manufacturing, detailing exactly how a company’s products are made. It sets production targets, identifies the resources needed to meet those targets, and provides a clear schedule. Together, these elements create a roadmap for turning raw materials into finished products.
A well-designed production plan is essential for manufacturing success. It ensures timely product delivery, smooth operations, and cost savings by efficiently utilizing resources.
Even when disruptions occur—such as stock shortages or equipment breakdowns—a strong production plan helps companies respond quickly and effectively, minimizing downtime and maintaining workflow.
Modern production planning has evolved significantly, thanks to advancements in technology. These tools have made the process more precise and efficient, enabling small and medium-sized businesses to compete on a much larger scale.
Why Is Production Planning Important for SME Manufacturers?
Production planning is important in any manufacturing business because it ensures that materials, labour, and other resources are available when needed.
By creating a production plan, businesses can avoid disruptions in their workflow and keep costs down. Furthermore, effective production planning can help businesses forecast demand and manage inventory better.
Many small businesses, particularly in the device, equipment, and machinery manufacturing sector, have small teams. While this is often fantastic for allowing communication across a business, it can also result in knowledge being concentrated in individual team members.
This is a risk to many small manufacturers as if that team member is absent that highly specialised knowledge is lost. A thorough production plan takes that knowledge ‘out of your team’s heads’ and puts it down in a process that everyone can access – reducing the risk to your business and improving multiskilling in your team.
Production scheduling or production routing are functions that allow companies to predict the material and human resources needed for their upcoming demand. Because of this type of advanced planning process, production runs more efficiently.
It’s easy enough to see the value when everything runs well – the entire process moves smoothly. Consider an example of how production scheduling software like this can enhance operations when things do not go well.
A production company is close to running out of stock of an essential item for Product A. However, they have already planned their staff allocation for this production job. In this situation, a good MRP system with production routing functionality can help determine what steps may be beneficial to take, such as switching the staff to working on a commonly used sub-assembly that does not require the out-of-stock part or highlighting a supplier who can re-stock the vital component before it’s needed for the production run.
In this situation, the technology helps to “find” that opportunity. The result is it minimises staff or machinery downtime, improving the efficiency of the operation.
Benefits of Production Planning
There are various benefits of production planning, including the following:
- Reduced lead times: Production planning helps organisations reduce the time it takes to bring a product or service to market. This can be especially beneficial if customer demand is high or if customer demand changes frequently.
- Increased efficiency: A well-planned production process can help organisations use their resources more efficiently and avoid unnecessary delays or disruptions.
- Improved quality: Organisations can improve the quality of their products and services by identifying potential problems in the production process and addressing them before they occur.
- Reduced costs: Efficient production lowers costs by reducing waste, which means less money is spent on raw materials and labour. Additionally, with better organisation, companies can keep inventory levels lean, reducing storage costs.
- Improved Customer Satisfaction: Effective production planning helps ensure that businesses can meet customer demand on time, which translates to happier customers and a stronger reputation.
- Enhanced Profitability: By reducing costs and improving efficiency, production planning leads to higher profits.
- Better Decision-Making: The data and insights gained through production planning can inform better decision-making across the organisation. For example, it can help with forecasting demand, managing inventory, and allocating resources.
The Role of Job Cards
Another component of successful production planning is the proper use of job cards. Job cards can contain rich data, including CAD drawings, images, and detailed production steps for any product within your organisation, and enable digital work instructions to be positioned right on the shopfloor where the action happens.
As a result, they create a plan for improving production efficiency and a means of tracking progress and problems. This leads to multi-skilling and the reduction of production errors.
Good job card software also contains time-tracking functionality. This enables you to better understand the reality of your production schedule as you can gain insights from how long production tasks actually take or spot differences in common tasks to highlight training needs in your team. With more information and powerful insights like this, it is possible to avoid some of the most costly bottlenecks in your workflow that cost you time, customer retention, and profitability.
Consider the visual value here: if a company is creating a heat sensor, a motherboard with particular properties and combining them together into a final product, both products must be in stock and ready for assembly. That way, when an order arrives for machine 1, the system will know it needs sensor array A, motherboard B, as well as XYZ casing to complete the project. The dependency graph takes that data and creates a visual graph like a flowchart so production managers see exactly what sub-assemblies must be completed.
Production Planning Process
Production planning doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, the production planning process can be simplified into these three steps:
Step 1: Create a Master Schedule
A master schedule outlines when each product needs to be produced and sets deadlines for each production stage. The master schedule takes into account the lead time for each component of the product and the time necessary for quality control.
Step 2: Create a Materials Plan
A materials plan ensures that all the necessary raw materials are available when needed. It should also include a schedule for when finished products need to be shipped.
Step 3: Create a Resource Schedule
A resource schedule ensures that all the people or machines needed for production are available when needed.
Step 4: Implement and Monitor
Having a plan is fantastic, but the reality of production on the shop floor (especially in highly specialised high-tech manufacturing) is quite different. It’s important to implement your systems by fully briefing everyone involved and gaining their buy-in. Also, once implemented, ensure you have defined the metrics by which you’ll judge success and monitor your progress towards your goals.
Step 5: Iterate and improve
A production plan can be a living thing that can improve over time based on feedback such as productivity stats, inventory levels, and qualitative feedback from your team. Take the time to review your plan periodically to look for ways to optimise your manufacturing business.
The Best Technology Goes Further
Production planning software helps businesses plan and manage their production processes. It can create and manage production schedules, track inventory levels, and monitor production costs. It can also help businesses optimise their production processes by identifying bottlenecks and areas for improvement.
By using production planning software, you can ensure that your company’s products are made efficiently and correctly. In a fast-paced manufacturing environment, it is vital to have a tool that can help keep track of progress and ensure that nothing is missed.
Flowlens has been designed to go even further, providing a full suite of tools to provide not just the above features but also better overall analysis.
The software provides users with a visual representation of their production process and allows them to track progress and performance.
Flowlens is custom-built for SME Manufacturers and is highly rated, especially within the high-tech device, machinery, and equipment manufacturing sector. High-tech manufacturers particularly enjoy the multi-level BOMs, enriched integrated job cards, and advanced and easy reporting tools built into Flowlens.
Production Planning Is a Core Component of Successful Manufacturing Today
Done well, production planning alleviates company-wide stresses, saves your organisation money, and protects profit margins.
Flowlens is an easy-to-use tool that easily enhances the way SME manufacturers operate today. Learn more about how Flowlens works, as well as how it easily it integrates your entire business from sales to invoicing.
Set up a free, 14-day trial now to learn how it can change your business’s bottom line.
