supply chain
Production Planning
Aligning demand, materials, and resources seamlessly.
Synchronising materials, resources, and demand.
Production planning is the drumbeat of manufacturing, ensuring that operations run in time with demand signals. When deployed effectively, it aligns both material and resource requirements, enabling manufacturing to deliver products efficiently and accurately.
A robust production plan must recognise all demand signals — from external finished goods requirements down to intermediate components and raw materials defined in the bill of materials.
Traditionally, production planning focused on Material Requirements Planning (MRP), but has evolved into Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII). MRPII integrates both materials and resources, and within modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platforms, it advances further by connecting planning with finance, customer service, and other business functions.
At EAL, our consultants combine deep expertise in MRP, MRPII, and ERP integration to help businesses achieve timely, efficient, and demand‑driven production.
Our approach
Our Production Planning Process
Typically there are three steps we will follow in developing production planning processes and tools on behalf of a client
1. Mapping the Planning Process
The first step in developing new tools for production planning and scheduling is to map the existing processes, identify opportunities for improvement and then develop a requirements specification. Our supply chain consultants are able to undertake a rapid assessment of the existing production planning processes, and their constraints, and present the opportunities for improvement and the specification required for supporting tools. This assessment can be performed for each level of planning – from the strategic S&OP plan, down through the tactical Rough-Cut Capacity Plan and Master Production Schedule and ultimately through to the execution of the production schedule.
2. Planning tool specification
There are many varied requirements for planning within manufacturing operations – one size does not fit all. Whilst all businesses need to have a process to generate S&OP plans at the strategic level, and Master Production Schedules at the tactical level, at the operational level some companies find Rough-Cut Capacity Planning sufficient, whilst some will need more granularity and will require a Detailed Capacity Plan.
The choice between the types of plans required, and their granularity, is most often driven by the type of product being produced. Typically, process driven industries such as chemical production will find a Rough-Cut Capacity Plan meets their needs, whilst discrete manufacturing operations, such as car plants, will often need Detailed Capacity Plans in order to determine their resource and material requirements.
Our consultants will produce a detailed specification on the requirements of your specific manufacturing operation, from strategy down to execution. At each planning level they will provide the process frameworks required alongside the tool functionality that will be needed.
3. Planning tool development
Once the planning processes have been mapped, and specifications for planning tools have been developed, our consultants are then able to either develop VBA based tools in-house, or work with one of our partners to develop a database solution hosted on a server and accessible via a web browser.
Where clients already have existing MRP tools within their ERP system, we are also able to work closely with the ERP provider to ensure that the correct functionality is deployed and that the system fully supports each step of the required planning process.