Aggregate production planning and the chase/level/hybrid trade-off, the Master Production Schedule and time fences, Material Requirements Planning's gross-to-net BOM explosion logic, and rough-cut and detailed capacity planning.
This module works down the planning hierarchy top to bottom: aggregate production planning balances workforce, inventory, and overtime against forecasted demand over a medium-term horizon, worked through a numeric chase-versus-level cost comparison; the Master Production Schedule disaggregates that plan into specific, time-phased end-item quantities, protected by demand and planning time fences; and MRP explodes the MPS through the bill of materials, level by level, into planned orders with lead-time-offset release dates — worked through a full gross-to-net numeric example.
The module closes on why a materials plan that is logically perfect can still be physically impossible: rough-cut and detailed capacity planning check the plan against what work centers can actually do, and closing that loop back up to the MPS — not just calculating forward — is what keeps a plan honest. If the arithmetic gets away from you anywhere, the studio's free calculators below run this same math live.