The production planning department has crucial roles in garment manufacturing for production scheduling and on-time shipment delivery. In this article, you will learn how a production planner can prepare the production schedule easily. However, they do many tasks other than activity scheduling. Read this article to learn details about the Functions of the Production Planning and Control (PPC) Department in Apparel Manufacturing
How to make Production planning tasks easier?
I don’t need to mention that Information Technology (IT)- based planning tools (software) are very helpful in production planning and decision-making.
What do you do when someone doesn’t have an IT-based system? You need to develop planning tools and build an internal system for easy access to necessary information. Planning tools will help you to make production planning faster and more accurate.
Planning tools:
The primary planning tools used by a planner in a garment export house to do a production plan are likely,
- A planning board (excel sheet or printed format). See the image below.
- Time and action calendar (order wise). Time and Action calendar format for production merchant.
- Line plan sheet
Pre-requisites information:
The following information must be available to make your planning faster and more accurate.
The production planning process does not change based on the fabric used in a product like the woven or knit factory. It is the process flow of order, machine requirement, and production capacity that vary. Here are ways planning tools are used to make planning tasks easier.
- Process flow of an order or list of tasks.
- Production capacity of each process - Cutting, sewing, washing, and finishing, for sewing - line-wise and product-wise capacity (pieces per day per line)
- Pre-production status - Such as whether fabric and trims are sourced or not. If not yet sourced the expected sourcing date, PP sample approved or not, or expected approval date
- Shipment date or planned ex-factory date
The production planning process does not change based on the fabric used in a product like the woven or knit factory. It is the process flow of order, machine requirement, and production capacity that vary. Here are ways planning tools are used to make planning tasks easier.
Step - 1: Time and Action Calendar:
The Time-and-Action calendar is mostly used for scheduling production activities. Use the TNA calendar for scheduling and planning tasks. on the other way, if you need the production schedules for different orders, you can refer to the TNA prepared by the merchandising or planning team.
The planned cutting date (PCD) and ex-factory date are the two most critical dates for planning that can be picked from the TNA calendar. You will get the total days available for all production processes for upcoming orders. Even you will get a rough distribution of the starting date and finish dates of each process.
The order quantity, which is a required variable for capacity estimation, is generally available in the TNA calendar.
For example, the T\total available time for production is 20 days (PCD 1st Dec 2024 and Final inspection date 20th Dec 2024). The order volume is 10000 pieces, and the main processes are cutting, sewing, finishing, folding, packing, and final inspection. A list of processes can also be picked from the process flow chart.
The order quantity, which is a required variable for capacity estimation, is generally available in the TNA calendar.
For example, the T\total available time for production is 20 days (PCD 1st Dec 2024 and Final inspection date 20th Dec 2024). The order volume is 10000 pieces, and the main processes are cutting, sewing, finishing, folding, packing, and final inspection. A list of processes can also be picked from the process flow chart.
Step -2: Use a planning board:
A line-loading plan can be made for a single process, or multiple processes in a planning board. Use the spreadsheet for preparing the planning board template. For reference, I have shown a planning board in the following screenshot. Based on the available time and production capacity of a production line, you may need to use multiple lines for an order.
Secondly, You may need to postpone the production start date if there is no free space (capacity) to load a new order. Once you draw a timeline for an order on the planning board you can see available capacity in a particular line and according to that, you can make planning for following orders.
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| Planning Board. |
Read our previous post for the line loading plan. How to make a line-loading plan?
Step 3: Calculations of capacity
First, calculate the capacity requirement for the order for which you need to prepare a plan. You can calculate capacity requirements using style SMV and order volume.
Secondly, you need to check the plant capacity availability in all processes within the given time frame. You need to check available capacity by line and time. Line capacity can be also calculated in minutes. For example, a garment SAM is 30 minutes and the line performs at 50% efficiency. Calculate the total capacity requirements (man hours) to complete sewing on time.
Conclusion:
By using the above 3 tools you can make production planning and production scheduling task easier.
Original post date: 04 October 2012
Revised date: 18 January 2025