What is the purpose of using Gantt chart for production planning?

Manufacturing companies are under pressure. Resources have to be utilizied efficiently, no idling must occur during the manufacturing process and delivery dates have to be met. The planner juggles with many factors such as employes, machines, material, order, dates. How can he keep an eye on them all at the same time? The planner is significantly supported by planning tables and other graphical overviews to visualize the data since diagrams allow him to comprise much information at a glance.

These plans are based on a Gantt chart since this chart type visualizes the activities' and tasks' position in time. They are the most important planning tool in the production planning. Really good planning tables, control centers or schedules not only visualize the scheduling but also allow the planner to influence the planning interactively. The ideal Gantt chart lets the planner control, check and optimize the production.

Ultimately, the purpose of a thorough production planning is to achieve customer satisfaction. One key driver of customer satisfaction is the on-time delivery. With a visual production plan, manufacturing companies are able to make realistic delivery time commitments to their customers. In addition to this, intelligent Gantt diagrams will alert them in case of delivery time violations.

The planning board visualizes which operation had been allocated to which resource. It also shows free resources and often also the degree of capacity utilization. However, state-of-the-art Gantt diagrams do not stop at visualizing the schedule. They are interactive and allow the planer to intuitively change the resource allocation by drag and drop operations. Hence, the planer always has control and can make sure that he achieves a maximum utilization of all capacities.

If the production planning application is based on a proper Gantt chart tool, it includes a histogram to visualize the utilization of all available resources. Typically, a histogram indicates a capacity overload with a signaling color (e.g. red) and hence the manufacturing planer can identify the bottleneck immediately. It is recommended to also provide a planning board view that shows all resources’ histograms on one view so that the planner identifies bottlenecks as well as underutilizes capacities.

Each production has its own process and hence each manufacturing company places its own demands on visualization. Some companies manufacture individually composed products, others manufacture in series production. Therefore the factors that are crucial for efficient planning are different in each company. Our Gantt components offer a lot of powerful functions enabling developers to create individual, highly functional planning tables. We also offer support if you don’t want to develop on your own: We realize for you an individual planning table creating overview and transparency of your production data.