Production Planning for Small Manufacturers

You already paid for the mistake you have not fixed yet. It showed up last month as a rush freight bill that cost more than the part itself. It showed up as a customer who used to call first and now calls a competitor first, because the last two delivery dates you gave them turned out to be guesses instead of promises.

Most shop leaders can name the day something went sideways - a late shipment, a machine down at the worst moment, a supplier who swore the material would arrive Tuesday and showed up the following Monday. These are not separate accidents. They are symptoms of one missing piece: a plan built on real, verified numbers instead of memory, habit, and hope.

This book replaces hope with a verified process, sized for a real shop without a dedicated planning department.

You will practice:

• A five-minute daily check that keeps your material picture honest
• Separating true throughput from mere activity on a busy-looking floor
• Calculating real usable capacity and building a defensible sequencing rule
• Finding your true bottleneck, protecting it, and cutting real changeover time
• A two-minute check before every delivery promise
• Sizing buffers correctly and tracking supplier reliability

The book covers building a verified plan, tracking material accurately, calculating real capacity, building a defensible sequencing rule, finding and protecting your bottleneck, closing information gaps, cutting changeover time, keeping delivery promises, sizing buffers, tracking supplier reliability, scheduling maintenance into the plan, building a visual system anyone can read at a glance, calculating the true cost of firefighting, and turning planning into a daily habit.

This book is written for owners, general managers, and production leads at small manufacturing operations - job shops and small factories, often running high-mix, low-volume work - who currently rely on memory, a whiteboard, or an out-of-date spreadsheet, and who want a floor that keeps the promises it makes.

Begin building a shop floor that runs on verified numbers instead of hope, and add a comprehensive, chapter-by-chapter reference to your library that pays for itself the first time it prevents a rush freight bill.