The Planning board module facilitates production planning by providing a clear, visual overview of scheduled production orders for each machine across a selected date range. Orders can easily be rescheduled using drag-and-drop functionality. Icons and color codes indicate the status of each order at a glance. Detailed information about machines, runs, and individual orders can be accessed by clicking on the corresponding items. Additionally, non-production periods, such as maintenance, machine downtimes, and other unavailability, can be added to the schedule to support accurate planning.


The Planning board module is available in the SCHEDULING section.



Tasks of a planner

A planner is responsible for creating and maintaining an efficient production schedule. The key tasks include:

  • Ensuring on-time delivery: The planner must schedule production orders in such a way that they are completed before their due dates. The ideal planning avoids orders that are expected to finish after their due date.

  • Prioritizing rush orders: The planner must be able to quickly identify and schedule urgent or high-priority orders that require immediate attention. These orders often take precedence over standard jobs and may require reshuffling the planning to accommodate them.

  • Minimizing configuration changes: Switching between configurations often costs time and resources. The planner aims to minimize these changes by grouping similar orders into runs, reducing machine setup times.

  • Optimizing machine utilization: The planner strives to use machine capacity efficiently, avoiding idle times and ensuring that production flows smoothly.

  • Prevent resource conflicts: Planners must ensure that orders using the same tool are scheduled without overlap to prevent resource conflicts.

  • Balancing workload across machines: The planner may need to move orders between machines to balance workloads and prevent bottlenecks.

  • Considering non-productive periods: The planner must account for maintenance, downtimes, and other non-productive periods when scheduling.

  • Taking shift schedules and team availability into account: Planning must also align with shift schedules and workforce availability to ensure that the right personnel are present to operate the machines and perform necessary tasks.

By carefully managing these factors, the planner helps to ensure that production runs efficiently, deadlines are met, and disruptions are minimized.


Planning board documentation

For more information, refer to following articles:

  • Visual layout: Explains the elements and structure of the Planning board module's user interface. 
  • Interactions: Describes how you can navigate and interact with the planning board view.

  • Order bars: Details the contents of an order bar, including icons, colors, and status indicators.

  • Automatic vs manual planning: Explains both automatic and manual planning methods.
  • Drag and drop: Shows how orders and runs can be positioned and what is shown while dragging.
  • Adding non-productive periods: Shows how to schedule periods such as maintenance or downtime.
  • Details and actions: Explains how to view more detailed information about machines, runs, and orders, and which actions are available.


How to's


Order processing and monitoring

Production orders are sent to the machine’s Data Unit, where they are added to the order queue. When an order is activated, the Data Unit begins recording the machine status, run time, stop time, production count, automatic stops and declared (long) stops that are associated with that order. For plastic production, it also tracks scrap output. Connect continuously updates the estimated end time based on the actual production efficiency.


In some cases, the machine’s HMI (Human-Machine Interface) may be used instead of a Data Unit. For more information, refer to the machine’s documentation.