The Production Calendar lays planned production out as a grid: one row per product, one column per week, for the current week and the three that follow.
Where to find it: Production Calendar in the Demand Planning section of the main menu.
The screen
Under the title it reads “This site’s production for the next 4 weeks, from the production plan in force, and works orders already being made. Click a cell to open its plan.”
- Columns are W1 to W4, each labelled with the week’s start date in brackets — for example W1 (14 Sep). Weeks run Monday to Sunday in your account’s time zone, and W1 is the Monday of the current week, not today.
- A cell holds the total planned quantity for that product in that week, across every works order in it, shown to at most two decimal places. The unit is the product’s own and is not printed. An empty cell shows a dash. Hovering a cell names the plan it belongs to.
- What is counted is what this site is working to: every works order not cancelled on the approved plan or one in progress, plus any works order that already has a batch, whatever became of the plan around it — that production happened. A draft waiting for approval is left out, and so are works orders cancelled when a newer plan replaced their own.
- Click a cell to open the production plan behind it — the plan of the first works order still to make.
- Sub-assemblies get their own rows. A works order for something you make on the way to a finished good is a row like any other — see How sub-assemblies are planned for why it exists.
- With nothing in the window the grid reads “No production planned for the next 4 weeks.”, and a read that fails says so with a Try again button.
The colours
A cell is coloured by what needs attention first, and the legend under the grid names the four colours. Overdue wins; otherwise the cell takes the colour of the least advanced works order in it — Planned, then In Production, then Completed.
| Legend | Means |
|---|---|
| Completed | The planned production for that product and week is done. |
| In Production | Under way now. |
| Planned | Scheduled but not started. This covers both planned and scheduled works orders — scheduled means a batch has been created from the line. |
| Overdue | The week holds a works order whose date has passed and no batch has been created for it. It wins over every other colour in the cell, because it is the one that needs a decision. A works order that has a batch is being made, however late its date, and never counts as overdue. The Planning Cycle raises the same thing as “N works orders are already late”. |
Availability and permissions
- Part of the Demand Planning module, which requires Manufacturing and Orders. See Getting started with Demand Planning.
- Scoped to your current site, like the rest of Demand Planning.
- A site is not a security boundary. The site selector decides which site’s calendar you are looking at and working on, and it keeps another site’s out of your way. It is a working scope, not a wall: a user who can open this screen and change site can read that site’s figures. The real boundary is the account — nothing belonging to another account is reachable at all. Do not use sites to keep figures from a colleague; use roles.
- Anyone who can view production plans can view the calendar. There is nothing to change here, so no further permission applies.
Things to know
- The window is fixed at four weeks from the start of the current week. Planned production further out does not appear here — use the plan itself for anything beyond a month.
- It is a view, not an editor. Nothing is scheduled or rescheduled from this screen; clicking through to the plan is where changes are made.
- It reads production plans, not batches. A batch created outside planning will not appear.
- A new draft does not show until it is approved. Regenerating production creates a draft beside the plan in force; the calendar keeps showing the plan in force until the draft is approved and replaces it.
- A replaced plan leaves only its real production behind. Approving a newer plan cancels the old one’s unstarted works orders, so they disappear from the calendar; the ones with a batch running stay, because they are being made.
- One cell, one colour. When a week holds several works orders for a product, the cell shows their total and one colour: overdue if any is overdue, otherwise the least advanced of them. Click through to the plan to see each one.