Production planning that survives contact with the shop floor.
Work orders planned against real stock, released as job cards, and tracked stage by stage until the job closes.
A production plan built on paper is a forecast. A production plan built on your live material position is a schedule. The difference matters on the day a work order is released for two hundred units and the store has enough for a hundred and forty — either the system said so before release, or the line finds out at ten in the morning and the whole week moves.
Production planning software earns its keep by planning from the bill of material outward, and that is where this module starts. Exploding a BOM against a work order quantity gives the material requirement; checking that requirement against stock in hand and open purchase orders gives the shortage. That shortage is the useful output — it is a purchase requisition waiting to be raised, not a surprise waiting to happen.
Once released, a work order becomes job cards routed through work centres. Each stage records what was done, by whom and on which machine, so shop-floor status is a report rather than a walk around the factory with a clipboard.
What you get
BOM explosion
Multi-level bills of material expanded against the work order quantity, so the material requirement is calculated rather than estimated.
Shortage before release
Requirement checked against stock in hand and material already on order, so a shortfall surfaces while there is still time to act on it.
Job cards by stage
A work order broken into the operations that actually happen, each one assigned, timed and closed on the floor.
Routing and work centres
Operations sequenced across machines and sections, so throughput is visible per work centre rather than only per order.
Job-shop friendly
Built for order-driven production where every job is different, not only for a fixed line running the same item all month.
Costing that closes
Material issued, operations logged and rejections recorded against the job, so the cost of an order is known when it ships.
Planning for job shops, not just assembly lines
Most production planning material assumes a line: the same product, a known takt time, a schedule that repeats. A large share of Indian manufacturing does not look like that at all. It looks like a job shop — every order a different drawing, different material, a different route through the same machines, and a delivery date agreed before anybody checked whether the machines were free.
Planning in that world is about sequencing and visibility rather than optimisation. Which jobs are queued at which work centre, which are blocked on material, and what happens downstream if a machine goes down on Tuesday. Job cards routed through work centres answer those questions directly, because the queue is data rather than a whiteboard.
Where production meets purchase
The most common production delay is not a machine problem. It is a material problem that was visible three weeks earlier. When BOM explosion runs against live stock, the shortage list it produces is exactly the list purchase should be working from — and because a requisition raised from that shortage carries the work order it came from, the follow-up conversation is specific rather than general.
The link runs the other way too. A goods receipt against the purchase order updates stock, which clears the shortage, which unblocks the work order, without anybody carrying the news between three departments.
Knowing what a job actually cost
Job costing is where planning either proves itself or quietly does not. If material issues, operation time and rejections are recorded against the job as it runs, the cost is available the day it ships. If they are not, costing becomes an exercise in reconstruction done weeks later, and the number it produces is the number nobody quite trusts enough to price the next order from.
Questions people ask.
What does production planning software do?
It turns a demand — a sales order, or a stock target — into a work order, works out the material that work order needs by exploding the bill of material, checks that against what is in stock and on order, and then tracks the job across the shop floor as job cards routed through work centres.
Does it work for job-shop production with no fixed line?
Yes. Routing is defined per work order rather than assumed from a fixed line, so each job can take its own path through the available work centres. That is the normal case for order-driven manufacturing.
Can it handle multi-level bills of material?
Yes. A bill of material can contain sub-assemblies that have bills of their own, and explosion runs through the levels to arrive at the raw material requirement.
How does it stop a work order being released without material?
The requirement produced by BOM explosion is compared against stock in hand and material already on order, so the shortage is visible at the point of release rather than discovered by the operator.
Is job costing included?
Yes. Material issued to the job, operations logged against it and rejections recorded on it are all attributed to the work order, so the job's cost is available when the job closes.
Related parts of the system
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