Production Planning, Scheduling and Sequencing: What’s the difference?

At Sabre Limited, we get asked quite often about scheduling and production planning. The trouble is that customers use the term “scheduling” to refer to any of planning, scheduling or sequencing. We need to dig in a little to find out which of these three they really mean.

It’s sometimes difficult to understand the difference between these three terms. In this blog post, we will explore the differences between them and how they are used in manufacturing operations.

Planning can be thought of as the high-level process of figuring out what needs to be done and when. It includes what resources are needed and how best to use them. Scheduling is more granular. For example, you may schedule a truck to arrive at a certain dock during a time frame (such as a 2-hour window).