Production scheduling software and production planning software for manufacturing that knows your real capacity
Know which order is going to be late, before it is late.
ProductionPlanning.ai is production planning software that builds a schedule fitting the machines, shifts and people you actually have, shows every order at risk, and costs 149 USD per plant a month with unlimited users.
Your data stays yours. Export or delete it any time. No card to try the demo.
Click a machine to take it offline and watch the schedule move.
This week on the machine shop floor
Order 1045 late by 1 day- On time
- Late
- Changeover
On time
83%
Bottleneck
82%
CNC Mill 2
Material shortages
2
What production scheduling looks like without it
Most small plants plan production in a spreadsheet, on a whiteboard, or in the head of one person. It works until something changes, and on a shop floor something changes every day.
The spreadsheet is rebuilt by hand after every breakdown
A machine goes down at ten in the morning and the plan for the rest of the week is wrong. Someone spends the afternoon moving rows around, and by the time the new version is ready, the floor has already improvised its own.
The promised date was a guess
Sales asks when an order can ship and the answer comes from memory. Nobody checked whether the mill that order needs is already full on Wednesday, so the date is optimistic, and the customer hears about it on the day it was due.
The bottleneck is found after the order is already late
The one machine every job passes through is overloaded for days before anyone sees it. The first signal is a late shipment, when it is too late to add a shift, split a batch or move work to another machine.
Production scheduling software built around capacity
Three things change on the first day the schedule knows what your plant can actually do.
1MondayShift 1
A schedule that fits real capacity
Every operation is placed on a specific work center, inside the shifts that work center runs, with the setup time it really takes. If a mill can do 16 hours a day, the schedule never asks it for 20.
2WednesdayShift 2
Every late order visible days ahead
When the schedule is built, each order gets a projected finish time next to its due date. An order that will miss is marked in red with the number of days, while there is still time to change the sequence, add overtime or call the customer.
3ThursdayShift 1
The plan lives in the company, not in one file
The schedule sits in one shared place. The planner, the shift lead, the plant manager and sales look at the same version, and it keeps working when the person who built the spreadsheet is on holiday or leaves.
How production planning and scheduling works, in four steps
From a list of open orders to a sequence on every machine, without a six month ERP project.
1
1. Enter orders and routings
Enter open orders in the app: product, quantity, due date, priority. On the Plant plan and above, import them from a spreadsheet or your ERP export instead. Add the routing for each product, meaning which work centers it passes through and how many minutes each operation takes per unit.
2
2. Set shifts and work centers
List your machines and work cells, the shifts each one runs, planned downtime and holidays, and the setup time when a work center switches from one product family to another.
3
3. Run the schedule
The scheduler places every operation with finite capacity, earliest due date first. You see the Gantt chart, the late orders and the bottleneck in one view. On the Plant plan and above you also pick the sequencing rule (shortest operation first or customer priority) and see the material shortages in the same view.
4
4. Send it to the floor
When a machine goes down, you reschedule the rest of the week in one click instead of one afternoon, and the new sequence goes out to the floor. On the Plant plan and above, each work center gets its own queue for the shift, and operators mark jobs started and done.
Schedule a real week, right here
This is the scheduling engine, running in your browser. Load a plant, change the orders or the shifts, switch off a machine, and watch the schedule recalculate. Nothing to install and no account needed to run it.
Load a plant
Orders
| Order | Product | Quantity | Due | Priority | Remove |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Capacity
Sequencing rule
On time
83%
10 of 12 orders
Late orders
2
1045, 1051
Bottleneck
82%
CNC Mill 2
Shortages
2
Housing blanks
Machine shop
- On time
- Late
- Changeover
- Off
Late orders
| Order | Product | Due | Days late |
|---|---|---|---|
Material shortages
| Material | Needed for order | Needed by | Short |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work center | Utilisation | Load |
|---|---|---|
You have seen your late orders and your bottleneck. Now see your own.
Create your account with your work email and open a demo plant for 14 days: your own orders, work centers and shifts, scheduled by the same engine. No card.
Three plants ready to load in the demo
Each plant loads with its work centers, shifts, routings, open orders and materials on hand. Change any of them and run the schedule again.
Machine shop
Two shifts of eight hours, five working days, earliest due date first.
- CNC Mill 1
- CNC Mill 2
- Lathe
- Deburr
- Paint
- Assembly
Products, orders and routings are the twelve orders and four products of the worked example below: Bracket, Shaft, Housing and Flange. Setup is 30 minutes on the mills and the lathe when the product changes, and 20 minutes on the paint line.
Materials on hand: 150 housing blanks.
Bakery
One night shift from 22:00 to 06:00 and one day shift from 06:00 to 14:00, six working days, dispatch time first. Quantities are in batches, and every order is due at its dispatch time tomorrow.
- Mixer 1
- Divider
- Proofer
- Oven 1
- Oven 2
- Cooler
- Packing
| Product | Routing, minutes per batch |
|---|---|
| White loaf | Mixer 1 (15), Divider (10), Proofer (60), Oven 1 (35), Cooler (60), Packing (15) |
| Seeded rolls | Mixer 1 (15), Divider (15), Proofer (50), Oven 1 (20), Cooler (40), Packing (20) |
| Sourdough | Mixer 1 (20), Divider (12), Proofer (180), Oven 2 (45), Cooler (90), Packing (15) |
| Rye bread | Mixer 1 (18), Divider (10), Proofer (90), Oven 2 (50), Cooler (90), Packing (15) |
| Order | Product | Quantity | Due | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | White loaf | 3 | 04:00 | Normal |
| 2002 | Seeded rolls | 2 | 04:00 | Normal |
| 2003 | Sourdough | 2 | 07:00 | Rush |
| 2004 | Rye bread | 2 | 08:00 | Normal |
| 2005 | White loaf | 2 | 06:00 | Normal |
| 2006 | Seeded rolls | 2 | 10:00 | Normal |
| 2007 | Sourdough | 1 | 10:00 | Normal |
| 2008 | Rye bread | 1 | 12:00 | Normal |
Changeover: 30 minutes of cleaning on Mixer 1 after seeded rolls, because of sesame, and 10 minutes between other recipes.
Materials on hand: 40 kg of rye flour against 15 kg per batch of rye bread.
Metal fabrication
Two shifts of eight hours, five working days, earliest due date first. Quantities are in parts. Fab shops can see the full setup on our metal fabrication production planning software page.
- Laser
- Press brake
- Welding bay 1
- Welding bay 2
- Paint line
- Assembly
| Product | Routing, minutes per part |
|---|---|
| Machine guard | Laser (4), Press brake (6), Welding bay 1 (18), Paint line (5), Assembly (10) |
| Cabinet enclosure | Laser (8), Press brake (12), Welding bay 2 (25), Paint line (8), Assembly (20) |
| Base frame | Laser (6), Welding bay 1 (35), Paint line (10) |
| Railing panel | Laser (5), Press brake (4), Welding bay 2 (22), Paint line (6) |
| Order | Product | Quantity | Due | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3001 | Machine guard | 20 | Tuesday | Normal |
| 3002 | Cabinet enclosure | 30 | Wednesday | Rush |
| 3003 | Base frame | 12 | Wednesday | Normal |
| 3004 | Railing panel | 25 | Thursday | Normal |
| 3005 | Machine guard | 15 | Thursday | Normal |
| 3006 | Cabinet enclosure | 25 | Friday | Normal |
| 3007 | Base frame | 10 | Friday | Normal |
| 3008 | Railing panel | 20 | Friday | Normal |
Changeover: 20 minutes on the laser when sheet thickness changes, 15 minutes on the press brake when the tooling changes, and 45 minutes on the paint line for a colour change.
Materials on hand: 40 sheets of 3 mm steel against one sheet per cabinet enclosure.
Production scheduling tools compared, by category
Four ways small and mid sized plants plan production today. We compare categories, not named products.
| Spreadsheet or whiteboard | MRP or inventory suite | Enterprise APS | ProductionPlanning.ai | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Knows machine capacity | No, cells hold whatever you type | Usually a list of tasks, not finite capacity | Yes | Yes, finite capacity per work center and shift |
| Reschedules after a breakdown | By hand, row by row | Partly, often by hand | Yes, after tuning | Yes, the rest of the week in one click |
| Shows material shortages | Only if someone checks | Yes, this is its core job | Yes | Yes, per order and per date (Plant plan and above) |
| Time to first usable schedule | Already in use, but always out of date | Weeks to months of setup | Months, with a consultant | Days, from your existing order list |
| Needs a consultant | No | Often for setup | Usually | No |
Holding a quote for a named system? We publish honest, priced comparisons that say where the other product wins. Against MRP and inventory tools: the MRPeasy alternative, the Katana MRP alternative, the Fishbowl alternative and the Prodsmart and Fusion Operations alternative. Against job shop and plant ERPs: the JobBOSS replacement, the ProShop ERP alternative, the Global Shop Solutions alternative, the Fulcrum Pro alternative, the Cetec ERP alternative, the Infor VISUAL ERP alternative, the IQMS and DelmiaWorks alternative, the SYSPRO ERP alternative, the ECI M1 ERP alternative, the Plex ERP alternative, the Genius ERP alternative, the Epicor Kinetic alternative the Acumatica alternative, the SyteLine alternative and the RealTrac alternative. Plants on Microsoft's ERP read the Business Central manufacturing alternative, plants on Odoo read the Odoo manufacturing alternative plants on SAP read the SAP Business One alternative and plants pricing NetSuite read the NetSuite alternative for small manufacturers. Against dedicated APS schedulers: the PlanetTogether alternative, the Siemens Opcenter APS alternative and the JobPack alternative.
A production schedule example with twelve orders on six work centers
One week in a small machine shop, computed by the same scheduling engine as the demo above. Two shifts of eight hours, five working days, earliest due date first, 30 minutes of setup on the mills and the lathe when the product changes, 20 minutes on the paint line.
What goes in
| Order | Product | Quantity | Due | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1041 | Bracket | 120 | Tuesday | Normal |
| 1042 | Housing | 50 | Tuesday | Rush |
| 1043 | Shaft | 60 | Tuesday | Normal |
| 1044 | Flange | 80 | Tuesday | Normal |
| 1045 | Housing | 70 | Wednesday | Normal |
| 1047 | Shaft | 70 | Wednesday | Normal |
| 1048 | Housing | 45 | Wednesday | Rush |
| 1046 | Bracket | 90 | Thursday | Normal |
| 1049 | Flange | 120 | Thursday | Normal |
| 1050 | Bracket | 100 | Friday | Normal |
| 1051 | Housing | 65 | Friday | Normal |
| 1052 | Shaft | 50 | Friday | Normal |
| Product | Routing, minutes per unit |
|---|---|
| Bracket | CNC Mill 1 (6), Deburr (2), Paint (2) |
| Shaft | Lathe (7), Deburr (2), Assembly (3) |
| Housing | CNC Mill 2 (13), Deburr (3), Paint (3), Assembly (5) |
| Flange | Lathe (5), CNC Mill 2 (4), Deburr (2) |
What comes out
- 10 of 12 orders on time, 83 percent.
- Order 1045 finishes Thursday, one working day after its Wednesday due date.
- Order 1051 finishes Monday of the next week, one working day after its Friday due date.
- Bottleneck: CNC Mill 2, loaded 82 percent of the week, with four changeovers between housings and flanges plus the first setup of the week, 150 minutes of setup in total.
- Every other work center stays under 51 percent, so the fix is on CNC Mill 2, not across the plant.
- With 150 housing blanks on hand against 230 needed, order 1045 is short 15 blanks when it starts late on Tuesday, and order 1051 is short 65 on Thursday morning.
What a planner does with that on Monday morning
Both late orders are housings, and both wait for the same machine. That tells the planner exactly where to act: add a third shift on CNC Mill 2, move the flange work to another machine, or agree a new date with one customer, then run the schedule again and check the result before promising anything. The housing blanks get ordered today, not on Tuesday night. The spreadsheet would have shown none of this until Thursday.
Try the demoFor the person who signs the invoice
You do not need to read a Gantt chart to see what changes. When the schedule knows capacity, a few expensive things stop happening.
- Late deliveries are found days in advance, while there is still time to act, instead of on the day the truck was due.
- Fewer stoppages waiting for material, because on the Plant plan and above shortages are listed per order and per date before the job reaches the machine.
- The bottleneck machine is scheduled first and kept busy, because it sets the output of the whole plant.
- Planning knowledge stays in the company when the planner is away or leaves, because the rules, routings and shifts live in the system, not in one file.
- Your planner gets back the hours each week that now go into rebuilding the spreadsheet.
What larger plants and groups need, included
- Single sign on with your company identity provider
- Roles and permissions per plant and per team
- A multi plant view, with orders moved between plants
- API access for orders, routings and schedules
- Up to 15 plants on one Enterprise subscription
Production scheduling software pricing, per plant
Every plan is a subscription per plant, billed monthly or yearly. Unlimited users on every plan. Paying yearly saves 50 percent: a year costs six months instead of twelve.
Line
149 USDper plant per month 894 USDper plant per year
For one line, or a small plant moving off a spreadsheet.
- Up to 10 work centers and 500 open orders
- Finite capacity schedule and Gantt chart
- Shift calendar
- Unlimited users
- Email support
Plant
Recommended429 USDper plant per month 2,574 USDper plant per year
For a full shop floor with a planner.
- Everything in Line, with unlimited work centers and orders
- Material shortages per order and date
- Shop floor status for operators
- Changeovers and grouping of similar jobs
- Sequencing rules
- Plan versions and side by side comparison
- Demand forecasting
- Import from spreadsheets and export to ERP
- Change history
Group
1,290 USDper month 7,740 USDper year
For a group of up to five plants.
- Everything in Plant, for five plants
- Multi plant view
- Move orders between plants
- API access
- Single sign on (SSO)
- Roles and permissions
- Priority support
Enterprise
2,490 USDper month 14,940 USDper year
For larger groups of up to 15 plants.
- Everything in Group, for 15 plants
- Multi plant view
- Move orders between plants
- API access
- Single sign on (SSO)
- Roles and permissions
- Priority support
See the full production scheduling software pricing with every feature by plan.
Questions plant managers ask before they start
- How long until I have a usable schedule?
- Days, not months: with an open order list and rough operation times, the first finite capacity schedule runs the same day.
- Do I have to replace my ERP?
- No, ProductionPlanning.ai sits next to your ERP, which keeps doing accounting, purchasing and inventory.
- What if my routings and times are not accurate?
- Start with the times your people use today, and on the Plant plan and above correct them as planned and actual times come back from the floor.
- Does it handle changeovers and setup times?
- Yes, setup time per work center and product family is counted on the Gantt chart.
- What happens when a machine goes down mid shift?
- Mark it as down and reschedule, and the orders that now miss their date are flagged straight away.
- Can the floor see the schedule?
- Yes, on the Plant plan and above every work center has its own queue for the shift.
- Who owns my data and can I export it?
- You do, and you can export or delete it at any time.
- Is there a free version?
- No free plan, but the demo above runs the real engine free and without an account.
- How does per plant pricing count?
- One plant is one site with its own shop floor, and users are unlimited on every plan.
- Can we pay by invoice or purchase order?
- No, every plan is paid by card, with an invoice for every payment in the billing portal.
Full answers to these and more are on the production planning FAQ page.
Read the FAQKnow which order is going to be late, before it is late.
Build your first finite capacity schedule on your own orders this week.
Your data stays yours. Export or delete it any time. No card to try the demo.