A Production Plan tells you what you plan to make. After you submit it, the work is spread across several documents — Work Orders for items you make in-house, Purchase Orders for items you subcontract, and Material Requests for raw materials you need to buy.

To answer a simple question like "Can I start building this today?", you normally have to open the plan, then open each Work Order, check each Material Request, and check the stock for every raw material. For a plan with a few finished goods, this can mean dozens of clicks, and it is easy to miss the one item that is holding everything up.

The Production Plan Visualizer puts all this information on one screen. It shows you, at a glance:

How much of the plan has been produced.
Whether the raw materials are available or something still needs to be ordered.
Which Work Orders and Purchase Orders exist and which ones have not been created yet.
When each job is scheduled on the shop floor.

Nothing on this screen changes your data. It is a read-only view, you can view the information, but you cannot accidentally edit anything.

2. When should you use it?

Use it when you want to quickly answer questions like:

Is this plan on track?
What is stopping me from starting production?
Have all the Work Orders been created, or did someone miss one?
Which raw material is short?
What is scheduled on which machine this week?

It is most useful for production planners, plant managers, and supervisors who need to track a plan until completion. You do not need it if you only create a plan and hand it over.

3. How to open it

There are two ways.

From a Production Plan (easiest):

Open the Production Plan you want to view.
Click the View menu at the top right.
Click Plan Visualizer.

Last updated 3 hours ago

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