Production ERP and production planning and control: production orders, scheduling and costs
A manufacturing ERP connects bills of materials, routings, production orders and shop floor scheduling to purchasing, inventory and accounting. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, FiveForty helps manufacturers control their capacity, lead times and actual cost price.
What is a production ERP, or production planning and control system?
The Production planning and control (computer-aided production management) refers to the computerized management of industrial activity: bills of materials, routings, production orders, scheduling, material consumption, traceability and costs. Today, it is most often integrated into a manufacturing ERP rather than deployed as a standalone tool.
Standalone production planning and control or manufacturing ERP
A standalone production planning and control system can plan a shop floor. However, it knows nothing about the order book, raw material purchasing or cost accounting. Integrated into the ERP, production finally connects with everything else: a customer order triggers a production order, which consumes inventory, which triggers replenishment, and whose cost flows automatically into accounting.
The question that always comes up: where is the margin going?
Time variances, scrap, rework, machine breakdowns, unplanned subcontracting: the actual cost of manufacturing often differs significantly from the standard cost. Without shop floor reporting, this variance remains invisible until the close.
From made-to-measure to mass production
Making a one-off part to drawing or producing thousands of identical units calls for neither the same planning nor the same level of detail. The ERP must adapt to your production mode, not the other way around.
Bills of materials, routings and production orders
These are the foundations: if they are poorly described, everything else becomes approximate.
Multi-level bills of materials
Components, subassemblies, variants and versions. An accurate bill of materials underpins requirements calculation, cost price and traceability. It must be updated as technical changes occur, with version and effective date management.
Routings and resources
The routing describes the sequence of operations: workstations, machines, skills, setup time and unit time. It is what makes it possible to calculate a realistic load and a reliable labor cost.
Production orders
The production order formalizes the release: quantity, dates, reserved components and operations to perform. Its status follows actual progress on the shop floor, from planning through to closing.
Release and shop floor documents
Production file, travelers, labels, workstation instructions: the required documents are generated from the system rather than maintained separately.
Version management and technical changes
A change to a drawing or a component must apply to upcoming orders without disrupting production in progress. Version management prevents costly errors at exactly that moment.
Production subcontracting
Surface treatment, machining, assembly entrusted to a partner: provision of materials, tracking of external work in progress, receipt and inspection. Subcontracting must be as visible as in-house production.
“ A shop floor schedule that nobody looks at is not a schedule: it is an intention.”
Shop floor planning and scheduling
The real issue is not planning, it is replanning quickly when reality departs from the plan.
Requirements calculation and planning
The engine compares orders, forecasts, inventory and lead times to suggest the purchase and production orders needed. This is the foundation: without it, the shop floor is constantly reacting.
Finite or infinite capacity
Planning with infinite capacity gives a theoretical plan that is often unworkable. Finite capacity planning takes the resources actually available into account and reveals bottlenecks before they block production.
Scheduling and sequencing
Sequencing operations work center by work center, minimizing changeovers and setup times. Good sequencing frees up capacity without investment.
Real-time shop floor scheduling
When a machine breaks down or a material arrives late, replanning must be immediate and easy for team leaders to read. That is what separates a tool that gets used from one that gets abandoned.
Bottleneck management
Identifying the resource that constrains the entire flow and building the plan around it does more for performance than optimizing every workstation separately.
Load, capacity and trade-offs
Visualizing the load by work center and by period makes it possible to make informed decisions: overtime, subcontracting or rescheduling an order.
Shop floor tracking and manufacturing costs
This is where the gap between planned and actual cost becomes visible, or stays hidden.
Production reporting
Quantities produced, time spent, actual consumption, scrap and rework. Entry must be quick and done at the workstation; otherwise it will be done from memory at the end of the day, and therefore be wrong.
Upstream and downstream traceability
Tracing back from a finished product to its component lots, and forward from a material lot to all the production runs concerned. Mandatory in several industries, useful in all of them.
Standard and actual cost price
Systematically comparing the two, then analyzing variances by type (material, labor, machine, scrap), is one of the most structuring indicators for manufacturing management.
Quality and non-conformances
In-process inspections, non-conformance reporting, corrective actions: quality must live in the same system as production to be usable.
Equipment performance
Overall equipment effectiveness, downtime, loss causes: these indicators guide maintenance and investment decisions.
Equipment maintenance
Scheduled preventive maintenance, corrective work, history by machine: integrated into planning, it prevents a planned shutdown from colliding with an urgent order.
Production modes covered
Dynamics 365 adapts to very different industrial models.
Discrete manufacturing
Assembly of identifiable components: mechanical, electronic, machinery, furniture. Bills of materials and routings structure the whole, with serial number traceability where needed.
Process manufacturing and formulas
Process industries (chemicals, cosmetics, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals), where operations are based on formulas, lots, yields and co-products, with management of expiration dates.
Make-to-order and make-to-stock manufacturing
Producing to forecast or only to order changes everything about how operations are managed. Many manufacturers combine both depending on the product family.
Configure-to-order and engineer-to-order
Configurable products, options, variants or custom-designed parts: the bill of materials is built at the time of order, which requires a configurator and fine-grained quote management.
Lean production and pull flows
Kanban, pull flows, production cells: these approaches are configured in the system rather than living in parallel on physical boards.
Standalone production planning system or manufacturing ERP
The choice depends on what happens around the shop floor.
Production planning and control software or manufacturing ERP: the comparison
| Criterion | Standalone production planning system | Manufacturing ERP |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | The workshop | The whole business |
| Materials | Shop floor inventory | Linked purchasing and procurement |
| Customer orders | Import | Trigger production |
| Costs | Production cost | Full cost price |
| Accounting | Export | Automatic journal entries |
| Multi-site | Rare | Native |
A standalone production planning and control system remains relevant for an isolated shop floor. As soon as production must connect with purchasing, sales and finance, a manufacturing ERP becomes more cost-effective than the sum of the interfaces.
Our services around Dynamics 365 production
FiveForty supports manufacturing companies in implementing, optimizing and evolving their production on Dynamics 365. We analyze your flows, define your manufacturing parameters, structure your bills of materials and routings, and configure business rules tailored to your shop floors. Our team helps you improve capacity, reduce costs and streamline the execution of production orders. With technical and business expertise, we turn your ERP into a true driver of industrial performance. With a people-focused, operational approach, we ensure fast and lasting adoption by your teams.
- Production flow analysis and optimization
- Configuration of bills of materials, routings and capacities
- Implementation of manufacturing modules (Discrete & Process)
- Shop floor and supply chain integration
- Team training and support
- TMA, continuous improvement and evolution of your processes
Our approach to industrial projects
We start with the quality of engineering data: bills of materials, routings, standard times. A production ERP fed with approximate data will produce approximate schedules and costs, whatever the configuration.
Phased shop floor rollout
We generally roll out in stages: production orders and consumption first, then detailed scheduling and time tracking once reporting habits are established.
Maintenance and enhancements
Our application maintenance supports the opening of new production lines and the evolution of your product ranges. See also our solutions Supply Chain & Logistics and our industries pharma and biotech and luxury.
Our Dynamics 365 modules
A question? An answer.
Frequently asked questions
Production planning and control (GPAO, computer-aided production management) refers to the computerized management of manufacturing activity: bills of materials, routings, production orders, scheduling, consumption, traceability and costs. Today it is most often integrated into a manufacturing ERP.
A standalone production planning and control system manages the shop floor but knows nothing about the order book, purchasing or accounting. In an ERP, a customer order triggers the production order, which consumes inventory, triggers replenishment and posts its cost to cost accounting.
It is planning that takes into account the resources actually available (machines, operators, skills) instead of assuming unlimited capacity. It produces a feasible plan and reveals bottlenecks before they block production.
By reporting on the shop floor the quantities produced, time spent, actual consumption and scrap, then comparing this actual cost with the standard cost. Analyzing variances by type (material, labor, machine, scrap) shows where the margin is going.
Yes. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management covers both discrete and process manufacturing, with management of formulas, batches, yields, co-products and expiration dates for the process industries.
Yes. The ERP tracks the supply of materials to the subcontractor, external work in progress, receipt and quality control of the finished product, with the same traceability as an in-house operation.
Yes. Scheduled preventive maintenance, corrective work and history by machine are integrated into production planning, which prevents a planned shutdown from conflicting with an urgent order.
The deciding factor is not configuration but the quality of engineering data: bills of materials, routings and standard times. A phased rollout (production orders first, detailed scheduling next) significantly reduces project risk.