From Four Days of Manual Planning to Two Minutes
A leading FIBC packaging manufacturer running seven production lines for global customers.
to generate a complete production plan, previously a manual cycle
to repair the plan after a disruption or capacity change
shipped on a regular schedule instead of partial loads and sudden surges
The Challenge
The planning team could reliably build only one month of production plan at a time, while the business needed visibility three months out to give customers dependable delivery dates. Each plan took around four days of manual work.
Any operational change triggered a full replan that took days more, leaving the business permanently behind schedule. Containers stayed partially filled for extended periods rather than shipping regularly, which caused sudden clusters of dispatches that strained operations.
Planning knowledge lived in the heads of a small number of experienced planners. There was no formalized process or tool to capture that expertise, which created key-person risk and limited how far the operation could scale.
What We Built
We built a custom production planning engine that generates the plan by considering purchase order dates, operational constraints, customer priority, and maximum order quantities simultaneously, while actively working to fill containers completely rather than leaving them partially loaded.
Alongside it, a plan-repair application handles disruptions: when production deviates or capacity changes, it updates the plan quickly from actual production data and current constraints, replacing days of manual rework with a fast, consistent repair step.
The planning logic that previously lived with a few individuals is now encoded in the engine’s rules and constraints, turning personal know-how into a repeatable, scalable capability.
The Results
- Production plans that took four days to build manually are now generated in fifteen seconds to two minutes
- Replanning after disruptions is handled by the plan-repair application instead of days of manual effort
- Containers are filled consistently and predictably, ending the pattern of partial loads followed by dispatch surges
- Customers get delivery commitments the business can actually keep
- Planning know-how formalized into a tool, removing dependence on a handful of key individuals
What changed: A planning process that depended on a few experts and days of manual work became a repeatable engine the business runs in minutes, every time something changes.
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