06th September 2023
Planning goes hand in hand with production and keeps manufacturing rolling. Responsible for organising the weekly schedule, demand planner Anne Byrne is a crucial member of the ARC team, overseeing a range of functions to ensure things run smoothly. In this article, she outlines what a typical day looks like, how automation continues to streamline our processes and the importance of collaboration to ensure a smooth operation.
Every morning starts with a look at the order book. My role is to ensure the production output matches orders coming in and ensure we deliver for our customers. The size of the order will dictate where it needs to be scheduled and enables our logistics team to plan runs and schedule deliveries for completed orders.
The planning schedule is a pivotal part of production. It allows us to dictate manufacturing around urgent or priority jobs, ensuring we are up to date with orders. On a day-to-day basis, I liaise across departments, from production to sales to customer service; this prevents errors or issues from arising and ensures we deliver exactly what we promise.
Over the last five years, we have significantly upgraded our planning system, investing more time and resources to maximise efficiency. Our digital planning system, Orchestrate, is central to this strategy. We have updated the software, incorporating new, efficient ways to log and track orders for production. Orders are now grouped by product, allowing for greater product batching and speedier manufacture compared with our previous system. This allows us to prioritise better and has been hugely beneficial for efficiency and communication, allowing us to offer a better value-added service by taking advantage of lean production. In the long term, this investment will also help us better understand demand patterns and support our broader teams and business strategy.
Planning is a fast-paced environment with lots of variation. I love that every day is different and carries its challenges. Being reactive, responsive, and problem-solving is the best part of the job, and seeing the end result delivered to our customers on time is really satisfying.
Once the planning schedule is in place, it’s over to production. The production managers take over and ensure orders are complete to our rigorous standards, guaranteeing a consistent, high-quality product leaves the factory.
