Production planning for food and beverage makers, without the spreadsheet
A good production plan makes each product in batches big enough to keep changeovers down, but small enough that nothing expires before it sells. 4castPlannr forecasts daily demand for every product from your sales export, then plans the batches on your line around capacity, changeover cost and shelf life, and compares the plan with how you schedule today.
The decision you make every week
Every week you decide what to run on each line and how much. Too little and you short your customers. Too much and product comes back or goes in the bin. The spreadsheet that does this lives in one person's head.
Ask it in your own words
- Plan next week's production for our 7 yogurt SKUs. We can make 60,000 units a day on one line.
- How many batches of each sauce should we cook, given 21 days of shelf life?
- Forecast orders per product per customer and tell me what to bake each morning.
What to send
- Sales, orders or shipments by product and day: an export from QuickBooks, your ERP or the spreadsheet you use now.
- Optional: line capacity, batch sizes, changeover time or cost, shelf life and current stock.
- How you plan today, in your words (for example: make the forecast plus 10%).
What you get back
- A daily forecast per product, with a range.
- A production plan: which product, which day, how much, within your line capacity.
- Expected waste and shortages for the plan and for your current rule, side by side.
- Accuracy measured on your own history, and a check of the plan against what really happened when the data allows it.
Tried on public data
Each example below ran end to end on a public dataset. Real numbers, including results that were not in our favor.
| Case study | Data | Typical error | Better than repeating last season | Plan result on held-back data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yogurt production plan | Greece | 19.3% | 28% | Saved $21,369 (9.5%) |
| Pizza shop ingredient orders | United States (synthetic) | 11.9% | 23% | Cost $494 (9.7%) more |
Plan costs in the case studies are example values. Typical error is the share of actual volume the forecast missed by, measured on past data the model had not seen.
What we do with your data
The forecast comes from testing several methods on your history and keeping the most accurate. The plan is an optimization model of your line: it chooses batch days and sizes to minimize the total cost of production, changeovers, holding, waste and lost sales, judged across many demand scenarios rather than a single guess.
Case studies
-
Yogurt production plan
Public dairy data run end to end: daily sales forecasts for 6 yogurt products and a production plan for one shared line, checked against the next four weeks.
Greece · 19.3% error · 28% better than repeating last season
-
Pizza shop ingredient orders
A synthetic pizza shop: a 14-day sales forecast and a two-week order plan for dough, cheese, sauce and boxes. The rule of thumb won the reality check.
United States (synthetic) · 11.9% error · 23% better than repeating last season · synthetic data
Questions
Can I keep using my production planning spreadsheet?
Yes. You can keep it and use our plan as a second opinion, or export our plan as a spreadsheet. Many producers start by comparing the two for a few weeks.
How do you handle shelf life?
Shelf life is a constraint in the plan: product made on a given day can only meet demand until it expires, and anything left after that counts as waste. You see expected waste for every plan.
What if my line is shared between products?
That is the normal case. The plan respects total line capacity per day and charges a changeover cost each time a product is set up, so it groups production sensibly.
What data do I need to start?
At least several months of daily or weekly sales per product. Capacity, changeover and shelf life numbers can come later; without them we show a forecast first.
Try it on your own data
Upload your export and describe the decision. Your first forecast is free for the first 50 businesses.
Related use cases
- Inventory reorder for wholesale distributors
Know how much to reorder of every item, every week, from the sales export you already have.
- Restaurant demand for restaurants and food service
Forecast covers, orders or items per day and know how much to prep and order.