Manufacturers are in flux these days, and Production Planners are in the thick of it. Supply chain disruptions have hit hard. Businesses are employing strategies to mitigate the effect of these disruptions. They are increasing inventory levels and improving communications with customers and suppliers. They are adding warehouse space and scrambling to ensure proper management. They are distinguishing between demand- and forecast-driven manufacturing. They are extending planning horizons to identify required raw materials inventory and manufacturing resources ahead of time.

Production planners are the front-line workers dealing with these challenges day in and day out. They need to maintain a feasible production schedule and be able to respond quickly to the chaos around them every day.

We continually work with our customers to help them master their scheduling issues and challenges, such as helping to identify the source of demand to prioritize work orders or adding visibility to the inventory at distribution warehouses. In this webinar, Olena Stepovyk demonstrates how our Production Planner is even more of an essential tool for production schedulers in QAD. She’ll show you how you can better see available materials and resources and promptly and efficiently re-arrange the production.

Questions from the webinar

	Do you have a report showing how scheduled quantities compare with sales orders?
Yes, we have a report that shows how scheduled quantities compare with demand and the projected inventory balance. We have several custom versions: demand split into sales orders and forecast vs. planned orders compared to the actual scheduled quantities. The existing version of the report uses advanced repetitive functionality, but we can change it to use discrete work orders as a data source instead.
	We use our own tool to prepare our production schedule and then create work orders in QAD. Can we use this tool to upload work orders into QAD?
Yes, you can use this tool to upload your work orders into QAD. You can copy/paste work orders from your tool into the 32 Soft Production Planner and simply upload them into QAD. Alternatively, we can import the data from your tool into the Production Planner and upload it into QAD.
	Can you talk about how this uses run times, queue times? Sources for work center capacities? Does it utilize calendar functionality to calculate?
Run time and queue times are used during the capacity availability calculation to determine how many working hours the work order operation will require. The QAD calendar functionality determines the work center’s total and productive capacity (in working hours). We have another Data Loader, Capacity Calendar, that allows for easy and efficient QAD shop floor calendar maintenance. In addition to the standard QAD calendar functionality, our Data Loader allows you to maintain capacity based on the number of employees (crew size) per work center on a specific date/shift.
	What does a typical project look like to implement this? I’m thinking, specifically, about the testing and training portion and how users take the tool capability to build a planning process.
We meet with you to get some details about your production scheduling process, and then demo the tool from your business process perspective, and send you a free trial to install it in your test environment. Once you install the 32 Soft Production Planner in your test environment, you can use the Planner to view your QAD data and scheduling process. We have a walk-through process to show you the Planner’s capabilities again, but now it will be based on your data. Afterward, you can map the tool capability to your scheduling process, or we can assist you. Many of our customers start with creating and updating basic work orders in the Production Planner, then use the component availability analysis, followed by capacity availability analysis.
	Does this have graphing capabilities?
Yes. There are two types of graphs in 32 Soft Production Planner. One is based on the Capacity report (work orders routings) and shows the load on work centers/machines. Another graph allows you to look at the schedule from the work orders bill perspective, highlighting production line load by finished and sub-assembly items.
	What advantages does Production Planner give over QAD MSW/PSW?
Yes. The short answer is that MSW/PSW is a good product, and if you are happy with its functionality, you don’t need to look into Production Planner. The more thorough reply includes letting you know that we have clients who use MSW/PSW alongside Production Planner and some who have replaced MSW/PSW with our Production Planner. According to clients, Production Planner gives them better visibility, a friendlier user interface, and a broader horizon than MSW/PSW. Also, Production Planner’s component availability and available capacity reports are more informative. You can tailor both reports to suit your needs, which you cannot do with MSW/PSW reporting. Lastly, with Production Planner, users can look at the projected component availability from different perspectives: work order component buyer/supplier where and how a component is used, etc.