Production Scheduling
Put work orders on a calendar, move them between days, and keep each day within the hours your team has.
Production Scheduling shows your work orders on a calendar so you can see what is planned for each day, move work between days, and keep the hours you schedule within the hours your team actually has. It works with the work orders you already create: give a work order a planned window and a due date and it appears on the schedule.
A small cosmetics lab, for example, might plan shea butter mixing for Monday and Tuesday, leave Wednesday for the product to set, and schedule packaging for Thursday — sequencing the week’s work orders in one workspace. A restaurant with one kitchen can spread its weekly prep across days so that no single day is booked for more hours than the team has.
How scheduling works
Production scheduling in Eleo revolves around work orders and their planned dates:
- Planned start and end — The window in which production is expected to run. On the web create form this is a date range; you can adjust the time of day afterwards by dragging the work order on the schedule.
- Due date — When the finished goods must be ready. This is separate from the planned window and is what marks a work order as overdue.
- Capacity — The hours your store has available on each working day, set once in Capacity Settings and compared against the hours you have scheduled.
- Priority — Shown on the calendar and used to filter the work-order list. Priority does not change the order in which work is scheduled; you decide that by placing work orders on the days you want.
Scheduling a production run
- 1
Set dates on the work order
When creating a work order, set the planned start and end dates and the due date. A work order with a planned window appears on the schedule; one without dates does not.
- 2
Open the schedule
Go to Production → Schedule. The calendar shows planned work orders by day, week or month, coloured by status, with each day’s scheduled hours shown against its available hours.
- 3
Reschedule by dragging
Drag a Draft or Planned work order to a different day — or, in the day and week views, to a different time — to move it. Work orders that have already started cannot be moved. If the new day would go over its available hours or its maximum number of concurrent work orders, Eleo asks you to confirm before saving the move.
- 4
Keep each day within capacity
A day scheduled for more hours than it has available is shown in red. Move work to a lighter day, or raise the available hours in Capacity Settings if the team really has them.
Demand Planning tells you how much to make; Scheduling is where you decide when. If Demand Planning says you need 500 meat pies by Friday, create the work order from the restock alert, then place it on Thursday — or split it into two work orders across Thursday and Friday if one day would go over capacity.
Capacity settings
Capacity is set per store. Open Production → Schedule and choose Capacity Settings (or go directly to /prodtrack/schedule/settings). There are three settings:
- Available hours per day — How many hours of production your team can do on a working day. This is the figure each day’s scheduled hours are measured against.
- Working days — Which days of the week the store produces. Days you do not tick are treated as closed and have no available hours.
- Maximum concurrent work orders — How many work orders can run at the same time. Work orders whose planned windows overlap count against this limit.
Production rules
The same page carries two switches that decide when a work order is allowed to start:
- Block Start when materials are not available — Off by default. Every work order shows whether its materials are in stock, expected from an open purchase order in time, or not available; with this on, a work order that is not available cannot be started until it is restocked or a purchase order arriving before the planned start exists.
- Run multi-stage work orders in order — On by default. A work order that follows another stage cannot be started until the stage before it is completed or approved.
Reading the capacity bar
Each working day on the calendar shows its scheduled hours against its available hours, for example 6.0/8h (75%), with a bar underneath. The bar fills as you schedule more work and turns red once the day is over capacity. A kitchen that is only 40% booked on Tuesday has room for a large batch; one already showing red needs something moved.
Availability
The schedule and Capacity Settings are available in the web Suite. The Suite mobile app lets you create, start and complete work orders and shows each one’s details, but not the schedule calendar or capacity settings.