WCapsuleM8

Role · Operations

Production Planner

Decides what gets made, in what order, on which machines, and when it will be ready. Every promise the company makes to a customer is spent from a budget this role controls.

Also called: Planner · Scheduler · Master scheduler · Materials planner · Production controller

Sits in
Operations
Reports to
Operations manager or supply chain manager
Owns these steps
Planning and making it
Measured on
On-Time Delivery (OTD)

What the job actually is

The planner turns a list of orders with dates on them into a sequence of work that the factory can actually perform. That means checking material will be there, checking capacity exists at the constraint, deciding what runs first, and releasing work at the rate the plant can absorb rather than the rate the order book arrives.

The job is mostly about conflict. Every order wants to be first, every customer's date was set by someone who does not know about the others, and capacity is fixed. Planning is the function that makes those trade-offs once, deliberately and visibly, instead of fifty times a day at the machine by whoever shouts loudest.

It is also the source of truth for the promise date. When sales asks whether four weeks is possible, the answer comes from here — and a company where that question is not asked is a company whose delivery performance is decided by luck.

Responsibilities

  • Convert sales orders into works orders with realistic start and finish dates.
  • Check material availability and raise requirements early enough to matter.
  • Load work against capacity, particularly at the constraint, and identify where it will not fit.
  • Sequence jobs on each work centre and make the sequence visible to the floor.
  • Release work at a rate the plant can absorb rather than as it arrives.
  • Confirm or refuse lead times requested by sales, with a reason.
  • Manage exceptions daily: what is late, what is at risk, what is blocked.
  • Give early warning of slipping dates while there is still time to recover them.
  • Re-plan when priorities change, and make the cost of an expedite visible.
  • Maintain the planning data — routings, standard times, lead times — so the plan means something.

A typical day

A realistic one, including the interruptions.

  1. 07:00Walk the floor before the meeting. See what actually finished overnight, which is not always what the system says.
  2. 07:30Daily production meeting: yesterday's output, today's constraints, three jobs at risk, one machine down.
  3. 08:15Re-sequence the mill after the breakdown. Two orders move; note which customers are now affected.
  4. 09:00Material shortage review. A bar stock delivery has slipped four days and affects three works orders.
  5. 10:00Sales asks whether a 14-day lead time is possible on a new enquiry. It is not; offer 26 days with a reason.
  6. 10:45Release next week's works orders — only those with material confirmed and capacity close.
  7. 11:30Chase the anodising subcontractor for a return date on a batch now sitting eight days in their queue.
  8. 13:00Capacity review for the next quarter against the order book and the forecast.
  9. 14:30An expedite request from a key account. Work out what it displaces, cost it, and take it to operations rather than absorbing it.
  10. 15:30Update promise dates on four orders and tell the sales coordinator, with reasons, before customers ask.
  11. 16:15Review estimate-versus-actual hours on last week's completed jobs; two routings need correcting.

Documents they handle

Systems they work in

  • ERP or MRP
  • Finite capacity scheduling or a planning board
  • Shop-floor data collection
  • Daily production board
  • Supplier and subcontractor portals for lead times

Skills that matter

  • Understanding capacity, constraints and why extra capacity away from the constraint changes nothing
  • Working with incomplete and slightly wrong data without being paralysed by it
  • Sequencing under conflicting priorities, and defending the sequence
  • Enough process knowledge to judge whether a standard time is believable
  • Communicating bad news early, upward and sideways
  • Resisting pressure to promise dates that cannot be met
  • Data discipline — a plan built on stale routings is fiction presented as a schedule

Who they work with

  • Inside Sales / Sales Coordinator — Promise dates, order progress, and which customers need telling about a slip.
  • Account Manager — Whether a requested lead time is possible, and what an expedite would cost.
  • Estimator / Cost Engineer — Realistic cycle and setup times, and feedback when a routing is consistently wrong.
  • Purchasing — Material lead times, shortages and subcontract queue times.
  • Production supervisors — What actually ran, what broke, what is next, and why the sequence is what it is.
  • Despatch Coordinator — What is completing when, and which orders will ship partially.
  • Quality — Holds, concessions, reruns and the effect of each on the date.

Where the job leads

  • Planner → Senior planner → Master scheduler
  • Planner → Supply chain manager → Operations manager
  • Planner → Production manager, for those who want the people side
  • Planner → Continuous improvement or operations analysis
  • Planner → ERP or systems roles, common for those who end up rebuilding the planning data

Questions this role gets asked at interview

Useful from either side of the table.

  • 01What is the difference between planning and scheduling?
  • 02A job with 40 hours of operations has a 28-day lead time. Where does the rest of the time go?
  • 03Sales has promised a customer a date you cannot meet. What do you do?
  • 04How do you decide which job runs first when three are equally late?
  • 05Why might releasing more work to the shop floor make everything slower?
  • 06How would you identify the constraint in a plant you had just joined?
  • 07A key customer wants their order expedited. Talk me through how you handle it.
  • 08The standard times in the system are wrong. How would you find out, and what would you do about it?

Common questions

›What is the difference between a planner and a scheduler?

Planning decides what should be made and roughly when, over weeks or months, against capacity and material availability. Scheduling decides the exact sequence on each machine over the next hours or days. In large plants they are separate people; in most companies one person does both and the scheduling half quietly consumes the planning half.

›Why does adding capacity often fail to reduce lead times?

Because most of the elapsed time on a job is queuing, not working, and because extra capacity anywhere other than the constraint changes nothing. A job with 40 hours of operations taking four weeks is spending roughly 96% of its life waiting. Reducing lead time is mostly about reducing waiting, which is a sequencing and release problem rather than a machine problem.

›Should the planner or sales set the delivery date?

Planning sets what is possible; sales decides what to promise and communicates it. When sales sets the date alone, the plant is permanently late through no decision anyone made. When planning sets it alone, commercial opportunities get declined that could have been accommodated. The date needs both, which is why the handover between them is worth formalising.

›How is a planner measured?

On-time delivery is the headline, but it is heavily influenced by things the planner does not control — breakdowns, material, quality. Read alongside it: the number of promise-date changes, work in progress levels, and how much of the plan survives the week. A planner whose on-time delivery is high because every date was set generously is not doing the job either.

›What makes planning fail most often?

Data. Routings that were set when the part was new and never revisited, lead times entered as a guess, and standard times nobody has ever achieved. Every schedule built on those is wrong by the same margin in the same direction, and the plant appears inexplicably late no matter how well the planning itself is done.

Tools this role uses

Built for exactly this job — downloadable, self-contained, and no account required.

Reviewed 2026-08-15. Job titles, reporting lines and scope vary widely between companies — this describes the work rather than any one organisation’s job description.