Excel Plans… Until Shop Floor Realities Take Over.

Creating a production plan in Excel is possible; however, in dynamic, highly constrained, and constantly changing manufacturing environments, this approach quickly becomes insufficient.

When shop floor realities come into play, the most common challenges of Excel-based production planning can be summarized as follows:

❌ Planning based on the assumption of infinite capacity
❌ Inability to properly account for setup times, shifts, and maintenance constraints
❌ Manual intervention required for revisions, leading to significant time loss
❌ Bottlenecks identified only after the plan has already broken down
❌ Delivery dates shifting from forecasts to mere estimates

The reality is simple: the shop floor does not run on Excel formulas — it runs on real capacity.

When working with an advanced production planning and scheduling (APS) platform, it becomes possible to:

✅ Perform constraint-based (finite capacity) planning
✅ Automatically reschedule and simulate scenarios after revisions
✅ Identify bottleneck and delay risks before they occur
✅ Enable real-time integration with ERP and MES systems
✅ Create production plans that are sustainable, reliable, and aligned with the shop floor

The question is clear:
Are you following the plan in Excel, or spending the day managing deviations?