Use Case · Manufacturing
Production Planning
& Order Control
Automatic scheduling, optimised machine allocation and real-time sequencing. Orders that steer themselves through the shop floor, with less changeover time and higher on-time delivery.
Why Production Planning Is a Lever
The plan is out of date by morning, yet nobody replans
Production planning in mid-market manufacturing often works like this: an experienced planner creates the weekly schedule in a spreadsheet or in ERP.
He knows the machines, the changeover times, the bottlenecks. He knows which order has priority and which customer will complain. The problem: his knowledge is in his head, not in the system.
Monday 7am: machine 3 breaks down. Material for order 4711 has not been delivered. A customer calls wanting their order brought forward. The Friday plan is obsolete, but nobody replans systematically. Instead: phone calls, sticky notes, verbal agreements. The shop floor supervisor becomes a firefighter rather than a planner.
Typical consequence: 60-75% on-time delivery (instead of 90%+). Machines standing idle because changeover sequences are not optimised. Rush orders destroying the entire schedule. And nobody can tell sales when the next order will actually be ready, because nobody knows the current status.
How the Process Changes
Before / After
Delivery dates met
The Solution in Detail
How We Automate Production Planning
01
Automatic Order Import & Scheduling
New orders are automatically pulled from ERP with all relevant data: bill of materials, operations, dates, priority. The AI agent schedules the order into the allocation plan, taking into account all capacities and dependencies.
SAP PP / Dynamics 365 integration. Automatic operation breakdown. Capacity check against current allocation. Scheduling with consideration of material availability.
02
Changeover Optimisation & Machine Allocation
The AI agent optimises the sequence of orders per machine to minimise changeover times. Similar orders are grouped, tool changes minimised, parallel processing enabled where possible.
03
Real-Time Replanning on Disruption
Machine breakdown, missing material, rush order: the AI agent replans automatically. The entire schedule is not discarded; only affected orders are rescheduled and re-optimised. Impact on delivery dates is visible immediately.
Event-based triggers from MES/shop floor data capture. What-if scenarios in seconds. Automatic notification on date changes. Prioritisation by customer importance and penalty clauses.
04
Real-Time Planning Board & Delivery Date Dashboard
Digital planning board for the shop floor, supervisors and sales. Current status per machine, per order, per customer. Sales can give customers a reliable delivery date at any time, based on real-time data.
Power App or MES dashboard. Gantt view per machine/line. Drill-down to individual order. KPIs: on-time delivery, machine utilisation, changeover proportion, throughput time.
Results
What Production Planning Automation Typically Delivers
92%
(previously 65%)
−25%
time
+15%
utilisation
Echtzeit
visibility
The greatest lever is not the planning itself but the automatic replanning on disruption. In a typical manufacturing operation, 3-5 unplanned events per day change the schedule.
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Ready?
What is the on-time delivery rate in your production?
Let us look in 30 minutes at where the biggest planning breakdowns occur, and how automatic allocation optimisation and real-time replanning can improve your on-time delivery.
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