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Frequently Asked Questions

What is PlannerHub?
A tool to help planners in small & medium sized manufacturing businesses. It helps them plan for raw materials & estimate how much demand they can meet with the raw materials they already have (with estimated delivery dates). 

Who Should Use PlannerHub?

Some users of PlannerHub are manufacturing businesses involved in metal products, plastic products, plastic molding, assembly lines,  cloth/mesh products, electronic goods, toy makers and automobile companies.

Typically the people using the system are procurement and planning managers involved in product manufacturing.

Our users have a unique need - they need to keep an careful eye on demand and plan to procure enough raw materials to meet current and expected demand. Usually this is a time-consuming process that requires careful tabulation of data and a lot of manual calculation.

Fortunately, there is an alternative. PlannerHub can analyze your current demand/supply situation. Given the right information, a good plan can figure out raw material requirements, estimated delivery date and whether you will be able to meet your current demand.

What is Material Planning?
Material Planning is a way to find out how much of which raw materials are required and roughly when they should be ordered to fulfill a set of product demand (orders + forecast). Material Planning generally consists of four steps:

  1. Bill of Materials Explosion - looking backward from each product, determine which intermediates and raw materials are required, and in what quantities. 

  2. Netting - comparing the raw material quantities against current inventory.  

  3. Lot Sizing - determining how the needed materials will be purchased or produced.  

  4. Start Date Determination - based on calculations, determine when each order should start production.


How can PlannerHub help you?
Material Planning systems help manufacturing companies in a number of ways, the main effects of a well run Material Planning system are:

  1. Correct parts ordered on time (this will reduce expediting, excess inventory, parts shortages, double handling of work etc.).

  2. Collation / rolling together of parts orders to suppliers (this will reduce the number of orders placed or manual collation). 

  3. Realistic planning of work (this will reduce double handling of work, reduce replanning and increase productivity). 

  4. Company data integrated and accessible (this will improve job progress visibility and reduce progress chasing). 

  5. Reliable commits to forecasts because plans are based on material availability.


What does PlannerHub cost?
Typical production planning software cost $20,000 - $150,000 and require months to implement and use. Our goal with PlannerHub was to make it affordable for small & medium sized businesses.

Clearly, that would be an enormous investment for small businesses to make. We designed PlannerHub to be hosted at our servers (to reduce deployment time & costs) and made it easy to use (so that anyone can get started). 

The monthly subscription to PlannerHub costs $24.99. Currently, we allow running an unlimited number of plans in this plan. For a limited time, we are offering PlannerHub for FREE. To avail of this special feature, sign up right now!

What exactly do you get with your subscription?
When you subscribe to PlannerHub - you get access to the production planning features you need. To see screenshots of the Members area you get access to - click here (PDF, 650KB).

Your account will have the ability to run production/material plans and see a number of views:

  • Material Plan

  • Net Raw Material Plan

  • Netting Details

  • Inventory Position Report

  • Producement orders to open/cancel

  • Expediate/de-expedite purchase ordersBOM view


How have other companies benefited from more efficient planning?
We've been helping companies make their production planning more efficient for four years. To see some case studies of past work we have done, head over to the "Case Studies" section on our Corporate website - click here

Explaining Material Planning - Dictionary Of Terms
The table below gives definitions of some of the main Material Planning concepts and terms that you may hear being used:

ABC analysis

Classifies inventory items into different categories depending on their annual usage demand.

Available capacity

The current availability of resources under normal operating conditions.

Backlog

All the customer orders received but not yet built and shipped.

Backward scheduling

Starts with the date the order is required and calculates the schedule back through lead times, transportation times etc. to the routing to determine the proper release dateto meet customer due date.

Bill of materials

Listing of all the subassemblies, component parts, raw materials (including quantities) etc. that are required to produce to produce an item.

Bottleneck

The manufacturing process for which the available capacity is less than the required capacity.

Buffer stock

A quantity of stock planned to be in inventory to protect against fluctuations in demand or supply (synonym for Safety stock).

Business plan

Statement of income projections, costs and profits (financially orientated)

Capacity

Aggregated volume of work available

Capacity planning

The process of determining the capacity required to produce in the future.

Capacity requirements planning

The process of determining how much labour / machine resources are required to accomplish production for a given demand

Completion date

The planned / estimated date by which an order will be finished.

Critical resources

Those resources that usually become overloaded when the schedule is increased.

Cumulative lead time

The total planned length of time to carry out all the operations.

Customer service level

The percentage of occasions on which the order or qty is delivered as promised versus total number of orders or qty ordered

Cycle time

The amount of time it takes to carry out one complete end to end cycle.

Data accuracy

The percentage of records which are error free.

Database

Data stored in a mass storage device under the control of a software package called a database manager.

Delivery performance

A measure of a supplier's ability to meet orders in full and on time.

Demand

Sum of orders and forecasts for a given time

Due date

The date by which an operation should be completed.

Economic order quantity

EOQ is calculated to balance expected cost of acquisition for stock against the expected costs to hold the stock.

Effectivity date

The date on which a component or an operation is to be added or removed from a bill of material or assembly process.

Exception reports

A flag which is raised when actual value differs from the expected value by more than some threshold

Expediting

The activity of rushing or chasing production or purchase orders that are needed in less than the normal lead time, or because of an increase in relative priority or because production/delivery schedules have fallen behind.

Feedback

The relaying back of performance related information such that corrections / improvements can be made to the process.

Finish date

The date by which an order / operation should be completed.

Finite capacity planning

The planning of capacity requirements taking into consideration the various capacity restrictions that (will) exist (See Capacity planning).

First in, first out (FIFO)

A dispatching / stock issuing rule under which the jobs / stock items are sequenced by their arrival times. For example, stock with a shelf life will need to be issued in this way.

First in, last out (FILO)

A dispatching / stock issuing rule under which the jobs / stock items are sequenced by their arrival times. For example, this will be the case if parts received are put on the shelf in front of those that are already in.

Flexible labour

Enable redeployment of workers so that minor changes in demand can be accomodated. Typically this is done through contract labour for peaks or overtime

Forward scheduling

A scheduling technique where the scheduler proceeds from a known start date and computes the completion date for an order, usually proceeding from the first operation to the last.

Frozen zone/period

The scheduling time horizon during which no alterations to the schedule is allowed.

Gantt charts

A type of planning and control chart, designed to show graphically the relationship between planned and actual activities over time. It is used for loading.

Gross requirements

The total of independent and dependent demand for a component before the netting (subtraction) of on-hand inventory and scheduled receipts.

Infinite capacity planning

The planning of capacity requirements assuming there are no restrictions on capacity level (See Capacity planning) can produce as much as required in any given time frame

Inventory

Raw material, Work In-progress, stock, finished goods and all items required for manufacture

Lead-time

(Purchasing or manufacturing) Span of time required to perform an activity (manufacturing lead-time consists of move, queue, setup and run time)

Multiskilled workers

Worker with the skills to handle a number of operations and machines

Need date

The date when an item is required for its intended use. In an Material Planning system, this date is calculated by a BOM explosion of a schedule and the netting of available inventory against that requirement.

Obsolescence

The loss of usefulness or worth of a product or facility as a result of the appearance of better or more economical products, methods or facilities.

On-hand inventory

The amount of a part / sub assembly that is expected to be available (i.e. on hand) not allocated to another job.

Overdue work

Work which has not been completed by the required date.

Overloaded capacity

A condition when the total hours of work allocated to a work centre exceed the work centre's capacity.

Pareto analysis

A statistical analysis used to classify data by category. The analysis is used to drive decision making.

Pegging

In Material Planning this is the capability to identify for a given item the sources of its gross requirements and / or allocations. Pegging can be thought of as active where-used information.

Performance evaluation

Process of measuring performance for the purposes of feedback and reporting.

Planned orders

A suggested order quantity, release date, and due date created by the planning system's logic when it encounters net requirements in processing Material Planning.

Planning horizon

The amount of time the schedule extends into the future.

Product costing

The activity of determining the cost associated with a particular product.

Productivity

Ratio of output to input.

Progress reporting

Reporting of the actual current state of an activity.

Projected available balance

An inventory balance projected into the future. It is the running sum of on-hand inventory minus requirements plus scheduled receipts and planned orders.

Queue

A waiting line (the jobs at a given work centre waiting to be processed)

Queue time

The amount of time a job waits at a work centre before being processed.

Reprioritising

A revision of existing priorities in the light of new information.

Routing

Document detailing the manufacturing sequence of a particular item (includes operations to be performed, their sequence, work centres used etc.).

Safety time

Material is planned to arrive ahead of its requirement date

Scheduled receipt

Items due to be received in a particular time period. (An open order that has an assigned due date).

Scheduling

Activity of assigning dates to the manufacturing steps in the process of manufacturing products (part of planning and control not execution).

Standard cost

A cost estimate based on standard labour hours, material and overhead costs.

Standard time

The length of time that should be required to: setup a given machine or operation and run one part, assembly, batch, or end product through that operation. Synonym: standard hours.

Start date

The date on which an operation should be started or was actually started.

Stockout costs

The costs associated with a stockout. Those costs may include lost sales, backorder costs, expediting, and additional manufacturing and purchasing costs.

Storage costs

A subset of inventory carrying costs, including the cost of warehouse utilities, material handling personnel, equipment maintenance, building maintenance, and security personnel.

Subcontracting

Sending production work outside to another manufacturer.

Supplier performance

Evaluation of suppliers usually with respect to delivery, quality and price.

Time fences

Point in time where various restrictions or changes in operating procedures take place

Time horizon

The period of time being planned.

Traceability

The registering and tracking of parts, processes, and materials used in production, by lot or serial number.

Where-used list

A listing of every parent item that calls for a given component, and the respective quantity required, from a BOM file.

Work in progress

Products in various stages of completion throughout the plant


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