Production Planning for Manufacturers

In today’s world, where the competition conditions are getting harder and different activities are needed in addition to producing and selling to survive in the market, businesses are using different ways and plans to increase their productivity. One of these plans is the production planning method. The mass production that emerged with the Industrial Revolution and the practice of making a product and then looking for customers started to be abandoned on the grounds that it is not efficient today. Mass production method causes problems such as increased storage costs due to excess production and excessive production due to production on demand.

Production planning is an alternative method used to overcome this situation. In this method, demand is determined first, then production is planned to meet the demand. Then, the plan is put into practice. It is possible to ensure efficiency in production and to coordinate the production tools in a way that will provide the highest efficiency to the business by production planning. For today’s businesses, it is not enough to produce and sell a product. Eliminating all unnecessary costs during the production and ensuring that it is produced at the lowest price possible is as important as selling the product. However, it should be noted that the effort to reduce costs never causes a decrease in quality.

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What is Production Planning?

Production planning is the coordination of the production tools and workforce owned by an enterprise in order to ensure the most efficient production. Let us review the process :

• Forecasting or Determining the Demand: In order to make a good production plan, it is necessary to analyze and anticipate the demand that may occur in the market. It should also be included in the planning stage in which the long-term orders are received. The determination of the demand makes it possible to figüre out the amount of product that must be made within a certain time frame and this planning is done in line with the target.

• Integrated Production Planning: This is the stage of planning the total production capacity to meet the total supply within a period of 1 year, which is called the medium term. It is aimed to balance the supply and demand.

• Master Production Planning: It is the stage of calculating the general production capacity of the enterprise and determining the maximum amount of production that can be reached. In case of full capacity operation of the enterprise, the maximum amount of product that can be produced in a certain time period is calculated at this stage.

• Material Requirements Planning: It is the process of determining the amount of materials to be used in production during this period, after determining the amount of product to be produced in order to adapt the supply to demand. If there is no possibility to store the materials at once, it should be specified at what intervals and at what periods the materials will enter the warehouse.

• Short-Term Planning: At this stage, the situation of production in a shorter period of time is planned. Situations such as weekly production and weekly targets are determined at this stage. All five processes should be planned in accordance with each other.

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Why is Production Planning Important?

Competition has become the main determinant in today’s global and national markets. Businesses that have managed to take advantage of the competition are gaining momentum. The main way to achieve this acceleration is through production planning. Production planning enables to determine the most advantageous among the companies producing with the same vehicles in the same area. Product sales prices of companies producing the same product are generally very close to each other. The fact that the price gap is opened a lot means that the advantage in the competition is lost. However, it is also an imperative to increase the profitability of enterprises in order to continue their activities. Since this situation cannot be achieved through the sales prices, it must be provided from the production process.

Providing profitability in the production process is only possible with a good production planning. The fact that all production tools and workforce can be used in the most efficient way and production is carried out at the lowest cost levels helps to gain profit from the production process. From two businesses that sell the same product at the same price, the company, which costs the product at a more affordable price, ensures its profitability and makes the insurance it needs to survive in the long term. It should not be understood as trying to keep costs low in production, reducing the materials required for production or decreasing the quality. In this method, unnecessary time losses and wasteful situations are eliminated only in the production process.

Production Planning and Production Scheduling

The developments in computer and internet technologies have created great changes in the fields of production and marketing, as in every field. Production planning has been an application that has been made by institutional quality enterprises since the past, even with classical methods. However, with the widespread use of smart technologies, planning of production started to be made in these platforms. Thanks to production planning programs, production planning has become a very easy task. Moreover, production planning programs are advantageous by reducing the number of qualified personnel required for this planning. It has a lower margin of error in production planning with smart programs compared to manual planning.

Production Planning with Fabrikator

One of the production planning programs, which has recently started to make its name known and has become widespread, is the Fabrikator. This application provides great convenience to the enterprises in terms of planning the production process easily and determining the strategies required for the production efficiency. Thanks to this application, which has a rich theme and easy-to-use interface, production planning has become easy for businesses. How and to what extent the production will be made is not calculated with the Fabrikator.

The program also offers convenience in controlling inventories before and after production and ensuring effective inventory management. Before the production starts, Fabrikator is also very useful for calculating the production costs and determining the costs that may arise in different scenarios. One of the important issues in the production planning is to follow up and control the orders. It is not possible to ensure the efficiency of production in a business where orders cannot be tracked effectively. Fabrikator also supports businesses in the recording and tracking of all orders received by the business. After all processes are taken under control, the process has the opportunity to be followed continuously by this application during the realization stages of production. In this way, any detail is prevented from escaping from the eyes of the enterprises during production.