Production Planning SoftwareDevelopment
Schedule jobs across machines and shifts against real capacity and material availability, and see which delivery dates are at risk.
Production Planning Software Development: what the work involves
Planning on a whiteboard works until a rush order arrives, a machine breaks down and a material shipment slips on the same day. The planner then reshuffles in their head, and the shop floor hears the new priorities by shouting across the room. Customers get promised dates that nobody checked against capacity, changeovers eat hours because similar jobs were not sequenced together, and idle machines coexist with overloaded ones.
DevKey builds production planning around orders, routings, work centres and calendars. Each job passes through operations on specific machines with set-up and run times; the scheduler loads work against shift calendars and shows a visual plan that the planner can drag to adjust. Material availability checks tell whether the job can start; actual start and finish entries from the floor update the plan; and a promised-date check at order entry shows whether the commitment is realistic.
Core features
Work centres and shift calendars
Machines and lines with capacity, shift patterns, holidays and planned maintenance windows that block available time.
Finite capacity scheduling
Jobs are loaded operation by operation against available hours, with priority and due-date rules shaping the sequence.
Visual plan board
A drag-and-drop timeline per machine, showing set-ups, overloads and gaps, with changes recalculating downstream operations.
Material and tooling checks
A job is flagged unready until required material, tools or moulds are available, avoiding starts that stall mid-shift.
Floor feedback
Operators or supervisors report start, finish, quantity and downtime from a tablet, and the plan updates to actual progress.
Promise-date and delay alerts
Quoted delivery dates are checked against the plan, and jobs predicted to finish late alert planners with the cause.
What we get right before launch
Reliable run-time standards
A schedule is only as good as its time estimates. We begin with measured averages from recent jobs, let planners adjust them, and refine from actual feedback over several weeks.
Planner adoption
Experienced planners distrust automation that overrides their judgement. The plan is a proposal they can change, with reasons recorded, so the tool supports rather than replaces their know-how.
Breakdowns and reschedules
A plan that cannot be re-run quickly is useless by lunchtime. Rescheduling after a breakdown or rush order is a one-step action showing which jobs move and which dates slip.
Tools and technology
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Node.js
- PostgreSQL
- Prisma
- Redis
- Scheduling algorithms
- Docker
- REST APIs
Common questions, answered
Does the system schedule automatically?
It proposes a schedule from priorities, due dates and capacity, and the planner can accept or drag changes. Many clients prefer this semi-automatic mode because it keeps human judgement over unusual constraints that rules cannot capture.
Can it consider set-up times between jobs?
Yes. Set-up or changeover times can depend on the sequence, such as colour or size changes, so the scheduler groups similar jobs together to reduce lost time, within due-date limits you accept.
How does it get actual progress from the floor?
Supervisors or operators confirm starts, finishes, quantities and downtime on a tablet or a barcode scan at the machine. Where machines expose counters, automatic capture may be added later, subject to the equipment's interfaces.
Can sales see realistic delivery dates?
Yes. At order entry, the system estimates the earliest completion from loaded capacity and material status. That is an indication, not a guarantee, and it improves as run-time standards and floor feedback become more accurate.
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Ready to start your Production Planning Software Development project?
Tell us what you need and we will come back with a clear scope, timeline and the questions worth answering before any build starts.