How to Build a 13-Week Supply Plan
Thirteen weeks is a common horizon in supply planning for a good reason: it's usually long enough to cover most lead times end to end, short enough to stay genuinely actionable, and it maps neatly onto a quarter, which makes it easy to talk about with the rest of the business.
Production Planning vs Production Scheduling
These two get used as if they're the same thing, and in a small operation they might genuinely be handled by the same person on the same day. But they're different jobs, working at different time horizons, and confusing them is a common source of friction between planning and the factory floor.
How to Build a Supply Plan in Excel
A supply plan doesn't need to be complicated to be useful. At its core, it's a simple balance: opening inventory, plus what's coming in, minus what's going out, rolled forward week by week. Here's how to build one that actually holds up.
Demand Planning vs Supply Planning: What's the Difference?
These two get used almost interchangeably in casual conversation, and in a lot of smaller businesses, one person quietly does both. That's fine at small scale.
What Is Supply Planning?
If demand planning answers "what are we going to sell," supply planning answers the question that actually determines whether that matters: can we make it, and get it where it needs to be, in time?
