Smart Production Plan
Using Smart Production Plan in Supply’d helps you save time, reduce waste, and ensure you produce exactly what’s needed based on real-time orders and stock levels.
Smart Plan Production in Supply’d is a powerful tool that helps you streamline your production planning based on real-time demand and product availability. By using Smart Plan, you can automatically generate production and supply plans that reflect customer orders, stock levels, and delivery schedules. It reduces manual entry, improves accuracy, and ensures you produce just the right amount - helping minimise waste and overproduction. This feature is especially useful for businesses managing multiple suppliers and recurring orders, giving you full visibility and control over your production needs with minimal effort.
For Smart Plan to work correctly, ensure the following has been completed before generating a plan:
All Sales Orders (SOs) have a delivery date assigned. This is required when Made to Order is selected in the Method field in Plan Details. 👉 See Creating a Sales Order.
All production products have been fully configured with the required settings, including lead time, yield, and any other production parameters. 👉 See Creating a Production Product.
Minimum stock levels have been set either as a default value or individually at the product level. This is required when Net Requirements is selected as the Method option and is also taken into account when using the Suggested option. 👉 See the Predict & Scan section of Product Settings document or the Managing Inventory document.
Ensuring these settings are complete will allow Smart Plan to generate accurate production recommendations.
Setting Up Smart Plan Production
Plan Details
Production Date Range
Select the date range you want to export using the calendar that appears when you click the field.
Click 
to confirm and save the selected date range.
Ensure that Smart Planning Date Range Interpretation is configured in the Production Defaults section of Production Settings so the selected dates represent the intended timeframe (ie. Required Date or Scheduled Date).
Location
Choose the applicable location.
Method
Select the method you would like to use for the smart plan.
Made to Order: Create production runs for each of your current Sales Orders, including Standing Sales Orders, during the date range.
Net Requirements: Deduct your current Sales Orders and expiry from inventory throughout the date range, ensuring that stock stays above Min Hold.
Suggested: Utilise your forecast rate of sale, stock expiry, and Min Stock Hold to keep you always in stock.
Default For Products: Use the default set in Smart Planning Date Range Interpretation in the Production Defaults section of your Production Settings.
When Made to Order is selected, an additional field - Ignore Sub-Recipe Stock Levels - will show.
Ignore Sub-Recipe Stock Levels
Choose whether or not to ignore the current stock levels of sub-recipes and schedule production runs for those, or to only schedule runs for sub-recipes that have insufficient stock.
For Net Requirements and Suggested, it is best to set minimum stock levels under Product Settings (global level), but they can also be overridden at the individual product inventory level ( Managing Inventory) if needed.
Made To Order and Net Requirements planning methods are based on delivery dates, as this determines when the stock is actually required. In contrast, the Suggested method works from forecasted sales rather than existing sales orders. Because of this, maintaining accurate delivery dates on orders is important to ensure Smart Plan can correctly calculate demand timing and generate more accurate production and purchasing recommendations.
For forecasting to work accurately, orders need to be consistently coming through Supply’d for a period of time - ideally at least two weeks.
Batch Creation Logic
When creating production batches, Smart Plan follows the production settings configured for each product to determine the most efficient batch sizes.
The batch creation logic works as follows:
If a Maximum Yield is configured, Smart Plan will create batches up to the Maximum Yield wherever possible.
Smart Plan will not create a batch below the Minimum Yield.
If the required production quantity is less than the Minimum Yield, the batch size will be increased to meet the Minimum Yield.
If Evenly Split Oversize Batches is enabled in Production Settings under Production Defaults, when multiple batches are required, Smart Plan will distribute the required quantity as evenly as possible. This prevents scenarios where one batch is produced at the Maximum Yield while another batch falls below the Minimum Yield.
This approach ensures production batches are both practical and aligned with the yield settings configured for each product. 👉 See Production Settings for more information about these settings.
Smart Plan Data
The Smart Plan data will be downloaded to your computer in a CSV file giving you a detailed breakdown of everything needed for upcoming production runs. It includes things like:
Products to be made
Quantities needed
Planned production dates
It’s a handy way to get a clear, organised view of what needs to happen, so you can plan ahead, order supplies, and keep production running smoothly.
If you selected "Yes" in the Include Reasoning Data field, you'll see an extra column, showing the reasoning behind the production data.
Review all the data and make any changes necessary, making sure any changed versions are saved as .csv files.
Be careful when changing numbers, as Yield and Batch Quantity are interconnected and must remain aligned to ensure the production calculations remain valid.
Importing Smart Plan Data into Production Runs
This feature helps eliminate manual entry and ensures your production runs are aligned with your demand forecast.
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