Production Planning

Hi,

This will be a somewhat loaded question, I do production planning in our factory and our current ERP system just doesn't work for machine scheduling. We are primarily a make to stock operation but also to some make to order work as well. Our product is manufactured in families, same diameter part but each part number is for a different length. After all the same diameter family parts are ran, we would change over to a new diameter part and run those. My current system is to maintain a separate excel chart for each family of parts and I enter the work order and quantity for each part number and then it multiplies to determine the amount of material required, I should note each family of parts uses just one material. Then I maintain a separate excel chart for each material needed based on the first chart and use that to determine how much I need and when/how much to order. For scheduling I use the first excel chart to determine what parts need to be scheduled and add them to a separate excel page for the machine and create the machine schedule. This isn't very efficient system and was wondering if anyone had any experience creating a production planning system, and if this would be worth my time to pursue. If so I would appreciate any direction or resources that could help me make this system. I wish I could use our ERP for this but due to use manufacturing in part families, I have found no way for the ERP system to reflect that.

Thanks

Lots of free excel spreadsheets for production planning here, might be of some use.

http://production-scheduling.com/