Production Planning That Matches the Shop Floor
Bills of material, routings, work orders, subcontracting, capacity planning and quality control connected to inventory and costing, so the plan on the screen is the plan being worked to.
Every factory has two production plans. There is the one in the system, and there is the one the production manager keeps in his head and adjusts twice a day as materials fail to arrive and machines go down. The distance between those two plans is the real measure of whether a manufacturing system is working.
That distance usually opens for a mundane reason: the system's plan assumes infinite capacity, or it assumes material arrives on the promised date, or the bill of material it is planning from has not matched what the floor actually consumes for two years. The planning logic is not wrong; it is being fed something that is.
iGlobal implements manufacturing starting from the floor and working back. We confirm what is actually consumed, how long operations actually take and where the real constraint sits, then configure planning against that. A plan built on measured reality is followed; a plan built on standards nobody has revisited is overridden by lunchtime.
Why the plan and the floor diverge
The most common root cause is a bill of material that has drifted. Engineering changed a component, the floor substitutes a material when the preferred one runs out, scrap rates were set optimistically years ago. Each deviation is small and reasonable. Together they mean material requirements planning orders the wrong quantities, and the planner learns to add a safety margin by instinct, which hides the problem permanently.
The second is planning without capacity. A schedule that assumes every work centre is always available produces dates that look fine on paper and are impossible in the building. Sales quotes those dates to customers, and the factory spends the rest of the month explaining.
The third is that cost is known far too late. If the actual cost of a production order is assembled weeks after it finished, pricing decisions are being made on standard costs that may be months stale. In a market where material prices move, that is not a reporting inconvenience; it is a margin leak.
- Bills of material that no longer match what the floor consumes
- Promised delivery dates the factory cannot actually meet
- Shortages discovered on the morning the order starts
- Actual production cost known weeks after the order closed
What the manufacturing module covers
Multi-level bills of material
Semi-finished goods, variants, by-products and scrap allowances, with version control so a change is dated and traceable rather than overwritten.
Routings and work orders
Operations with standard times per work centre, printed or tablet-based work orders on the floor, and actual time recorded against each operation rather than estimated at the end.
Finite capacity scheduling
A Gantt schedule that respects work centre availability, shift calendars and maintenance windows, so the promised date is one the factory can actually hit.
Subcontracting as a first class step
Material issued to the subcontractor, work in progress tracked while it is outside, and the receipt costed correctly. Outsourced operations stop being a hole in the traceability chain.
Quality control at defined points
Inspection steps on receipt, in process and before despatch, with pass criteria, non-conformance handling and a record attached to the lot rather than filed in a folder.
Costing per production order
Material, labour and overhead accumulated as the order progresses, with the variance against standard visible when the order closes rather than at the end of the quarter.
How we deliver it
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1
Floor study and data verification 2 to 4 weeks
We verify bills of material against what is actually consumed and time a sample of operations. This step is often where a client learns their standards have drifted, and it is worth the time on its own.
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2
Configuration and pilot line 4 to 8 weeks
One product family is configured end to end and run in parallel with the existing method, so problems are found on one line rather than across the whole factory.
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3
Shop floor rollout 4 to 8 weeks
Remaining product families, work centre terminals or tablets, barcode scanning for material issue, and operator training delivered in short sessions at the line rather than in a meeting room.
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4
Costing and planning handover 2 to 4 weeks
Variance analysis reviewed with finance, planning parameters tuned after real demand has run through the system, and the planner takes over the schedule.
Who this is for
- Discrete manufacturers with multi-level assemblies
- Factories using subcontractors for part of the process
- Producers who cannot currently state actual cost per order
- Plants promising delivery dates the floor cannot meet
Why iGlobal
We verify your standards before trusting them
Configuring a planning engine on drifted bills of material produces confident wrong answers. The floor study is in our standard scope because skipping it is the most common reason manufacturing projects disappoint.
One line first, then the factory
A pilot family running in parallel contains the risk. Discovering a costing error on one product is a correction; discovering it across six hundred is a crisis.
Costing connected to the accounts
Because production, inventory and accounting share one database, work in progress and finished goods valuation are correct continuously rather than reconstructed at period end.
The best balance of cost, quality, and service
No licence charge per work centre or per terminal, so putting a screen at every station is a hardware decision rather than a software negotiation.
Three ways to do this, compared
| What you are comparing | By hand, on spreadsheets | Off-the-shelf software | With iGlobal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deciding what to make next | The production manager's judgement, held in his head | A planning run over stock figures that are already wrong | Orders, stock and machine capacity read into one plan |
| Cost of one finished unit | One average figure applied to everything | A standard cost updated once a year | Materials, labour and overhead on that actual work order |
| Tracing a batch during a recall | Hope the paper file is complete and legible | Lot numbers, if somebody remembered to type them | Lot and serial followed from goods receipt to delivery |
| Cost across three years | Hidden inside salaries, so it never appears in a budget | A predictable licence per user, plus the work it cannot do | Quoted per phase and reviewed with you before each one starts |
| Who holds your data | Scattered across files, inboxes and personal phones | On the vendor platform, exported on the vendor's terms | Your own database, exportable in full whenever you ask |
| When something breaks | The person who built the file, if they still work here | A ticket queue, often in another language and time zone | A named engineer in Hanoi you can reach the same working day |
The two middle columns describe approaches that genuinely work for some companies. Where they win, they win, and we have tried to say so.
What changes after go live
The first change is that the planner stops working from a private spreadsheet. When the schedule in the system respects real capacity and real material availability, it becomes the version everyone works to, and the daily production meeting shortens considerably.
The second is that shortages move earlier. Material requirements are calculated against a schedule the factory can actually execute, so a missing component surfaces at purchasing time rather than on the morning the order was due to start. Expediting costs fall simply because there is less to expedite.
The third arrives with the first closed month and tends to be uncomfortable. Actual cost per order, with variance against standard, usually reveals that one or two product lines are thinner than believed. That is unwelcome news and it is the single most valuable output of the project.
- One production schedule everybody actually works to
- Material shortages surfacing at purchasing, not at start of run
- Promised dates the factory can meet, quoted with confidence
- Actual cost and variance per order available when it closes
Frequently asked questions
Can it handle make to order and make to stock together?
Yes, and most of our manufacturing clients run both. Replenishment rules are set per product, so a standard item can be produced to a minimum stock level while a configured item is triggered by the sales order. The planner sees both in one schedule rather than two systems.
Do operators need computers at every station?
Not necessarily. Some factories use a tablet per work centre, others print work orders with barcodes and scan at a few stations. The right answer depends on your environment, literacy with devices and how much real time visibility is worth to you. We would rather deploy fewer terminals that get used than more that get bypassed.
How does it deal with material substitutions on the floor?
Substitution is recorded against the production order, so the actual consumption and the actual cost reflect what was used rather than what was planned. This matters more than it sounds: a factory where substitutions are invisible will never have a trustworthy bill of material, because the evidence of drift is being discarded.
Can we connect machines or IoT sensors?
Where a machine exposes counts, run status or quality readings, those can feed work order progress automatically instead of being keyed in. We are candid that this is worth doing on bottleneck machines first; instrumenting everything at once costs real money and the data from non-constraint machines rarely changes a decision.
What if our production is more craft than process?
Then we configure less, not more. Workshops with variable routings and skilled judgement at each step are badly served by rigid operation timing, so we typically track material and cost rigorously while keeping the scheduling light. Forcing a craft process into a flow model is a known way to have the system ignored.
Related solutions
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Tell us what you are trying to fix and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right team for it.