Production Planning and Product Cost Control in One System

Production Planning and Product Cost Control in One System

Production planning is more than creating a schedule. To deliver on time and protect margins, a manufacturing company must connect customer orders, available capacity, machines, people, materials and costs.

YOKOMATIC brings this information together in one operational cockpit, providing an up-to-date view of production and product costs.

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The Essential Stages of Production Planning

1. Demand Forecasting and Customer Orders

Production planning begins with demand forecasts and actual customer orders. The company must determine which products will be required, in what quantities and within which time frame.

YOKOMATIC connects demand and customer orders with the resources and production capacity required to fulfil them.

2. Master Production Schedule

The Master Production Schedule defines:

• what must be produced;
• in which quantities;
• by which deadline;
• for which customer or production order;
• with which priority.

Instead of maintaining multiple Excel files, all relevant information is available in one system and can be updated whenever priorities change.

3. Operations and Capacity Planning

Every production order must be translated into a sequence of operations. Each operation requires specific resources, including:

• machines;
• employees;
• tools, moulds or fixtures;
• work areas;
• setup times;
• production times;
• available capacity.

YOKOMATIC helps identify overloads, idle time and conflicts between production orders before they affect delivery dates.

4. Material Requirements Planning

Production cannot begin if the required materials or components are unavailable.

Material planning must consider:

• the product structure and Bill of Materials;
• the material requirements for each production order;
• existing inventory;
• purchase orders;
• supplier lead times;
• alternative materials;
• the risk of shortages or excess inventory.

YOKOMATIC provides visibility into the relationship between production orders, material availability and delivery deadlines.

5. Monitoring and Replanning

The original production plan frequently changes because of:

• urgent customer orders;
• delayed materials;
• unavailable machines;
• staff shortages;
• scrap or quality issues;
• customer-requested modifications.

A modern planning system must support rapid simulation and replanning without requiring users to manually rebuild several Excel files.

From Production Planning to Product Cost

Every planning decision has a direct impact on product cost.

Changing the machine, operation sequence, batch size, material or delivery deadline can affect:

• material consumption;
• production time;
• machine costs;
• labour costs;
• energy consumption;
• logistics costs;
• scrap costs;
• order margin.

YOKOMATIC connects operational production planning with the information required to calculate and understand product costs.

Methods for Optimising Product CostsProcess Digitalisation

Replacing isolated Excel files with a centralised system reduces repeated data entry, differences between file versions and the time required to consolidate reports.

Management can see the current situation without waiting for another manually prepared report.

Reducing Waste and Scrap

Scrap costs should be assigned to the product, production order, operation and cause that generated them.

This connection enables the factory to identify:

• products with high losses;
• problematic operations;
• machines generating deviations;
• costs caused by nonconformities.

Integrating Maintenance into Production Planning

Planned shutdowns and maintenance activities must be considered when machine availability is calculated.

This prevents production from being scheduled against capacity that will not actually be available.

Optimising Materials and Procurement

Accurate planning reduces both the risk of material shortages and the cost of unnecessary inventory.

The system should show how a missing material affects:

• production orders;
• delivery dates;
• capacity utilisation;
• additional costs.

Target Costing and Cost-Value Analysis

Target costing starts with the maximum cost a product can support while remaining profitable.

For every product, the following values should be compared:

• target cost;
• planned cost;
• standard cost;
• actual cost;
• variances and their causes.

YOKOMATIC connects the product structure, operations, resources and production times with the information required for accurate product costing.

What YOKOMATIC Provides

• production order planning;
• machine and capacity planning;
• workforce and resource planning;
• connections between orders and materials;
• rapid replanning when circumstances change;
• visibility into priorities and delivery dates;
• planned and actual product costs;
• centralised access to operational information;
• an unlimited number of users;
• no licence fees per user.

Replace Excel Complexity with an Operational Cockpit

YOKOMATIC was developed in response to a real business problem: a production planning and product costing process that had become too complex to manage effectively in Excel.

The solution is already being used by a manufacturing company. We can present the actual implementation and facilitate a direct exchange of experience with the user company.