How to Prepare a Production Plan (With a Template)

To prepare a production plan, write down what you expect to sell each week for the next month or so, take off what's already on the shelf while keeping a safety stock, round what's left up to whole batches, check the batches fit the hours and equipment you have, and then work out the materials those batches need, ordering first whatever takes longest to arrive. A plan answers what and how much, week by week; a schedule, made from it, answers which day. Below is a month planned for two products, one made to stock and one made to order, and a free template that does the arithmetic.

The short version

1. Demand per week: orders on the books, plus a forecast from your own recent sales, plus anything you know is coming.
2. Decide for each product: made to stock (it keeps) or made to order (it doesn't).
3. For stock products: last week's stock − this week's demand. Below safety stock? Plan enough whole batches to get back above it.
4. For order products: the week's orders, rounded up to whole batches.
5. Check the batches fit: fryer days, oven loads, hands.
6. Multiply batches by each recipe to get materials. Take off stock and open orders. Order the long lead times first.
7. Every week, compare what happened with the plan and roll it forward a week.
8. TaroStack drafts the whole plan from your orders, stock and history for you to approve. More below.

Step 1: write down demand

Windward Roots, the made-up taro business I use in these examples, is planning October 2026. Two products are enough to show every idea: taro chips in 5 oz bags and taro sweet bread.

Chips go to a grocery chain, 480 bags a week (40 cases of 12), and to the company's own shops and online store, about 240 a week, which is the average of the last four weeks. The chain has asked for an extra 180 bags in the week of October 26 for a promotion. Bread goes to the shop, 48 loaves a week; to a café, 24; and in the third week, a catering order of 20.

Separate what's ordered from what's forecast. The chain's 480 is a standing order; the 240 is a guess, a good one, and the plan should be easy to change when it turns out wrong.

Step 2: made to stock, or made to order

The chips have a 90-day shelf life, so they're made ahead and sold from the shelf: made to stock. The bread keeps five days, so it's made for the week's orders and no more: made to order. The difference decides how each is planned, and make to order vs make to stock goes into it properly.

Step 3: the made-to-stock product

A batch of chips makes 360 bags. The safety stock is 360 bags, half a week, in case a fry day goes wrong or the chain reorders early. There are 900 bags on the shelf on October 5.

Each week starts from where the last one ended. In the first, 900 − 720 leaves 180, under the safety stock, so one batch brings it back to 540. In the second, 540 − 720 would be −180: two batches. And so on. The promotion week needs two batches too, and ends exactly on the safety stock, which is what it's for.

This table has a name, a master production schedule, but it's only the arithmetic of not running out without overmaking.

Step 4: the made-to-order product

A batch of sweet bread makes 24 loaves:

The catering order turns week three's 92 into four batches, and the 4 spare loaves go on the shop counter. No safety stock here: bread made "just in case" on Monday is a loss on Saturday.

Step 5: check it fits

The fryer does one batch a day, and chips can have three days a week. The oven takes four bread batches a week around everything else. The busiest week, the 19th, needs two fry days and four bread batches: it fits, with one fry day to spare. If it didn't, the choices are to make chips a week early (they keep), add a shift, or tell the café now rather than on the day.

Step 6: the materials

Seven batches of chips and thirteen of bread, multiplied by each recipe (the chips' recipe per bag is in the Shopify raw materials article), against what's on hand and already on order:

The short column is a shopping list, but the lead-time column is the order to do it in. The taro is short by 300 kg and doesn't matter today, because it comes twice a week. The pouches are short by 120 and matter most, because printed pouches take three weeks, and without them the promotion week has chips and nothing to put them in. This is the step that turns a plan into the reason you place an order on a Monday instead of panicking on a Thursday. How a recipe turns into a list like this is in bill of materials for food.

Step 7: turn it into a schedule, and keep it rolling

The plan says two fry days in the week of the 12th. The schedule says which two, which day the bread batches go in the oven, and who's on: that's the next step, and there's a full week of it in the production schedule example, and a day of it in bakery production planning.

Then, every week, write what really happened next to the plan, drop the week that's gone, and add a new one at the end. A plan that's four weeks long every Monday is useful; one made once in October and never touched is a historical document by the 15th.

Get the template

Download the production plan template. It has the four weeks for both products, with the batches worked out from demand, stock, safety stock and batch size, and the materials tab that multiplies batches by recipes and flags what's short. Change the demand and the batches and materials follow. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Projected before making  =last week's end - this week's demand
Batches to make          =IF(projected >= safety stock, 0, ROUNDUP((safety stock - projected) / batch size, 0))
Short                    =MAX(0, needed - on hand - on order)

Where this stops working

The template plans two products from numbers you type. A real month has twenty products, some made from others, demand that changes on a Wednesday, a batch that came out short, a delivery that came two days late, and stock that only matches the spreadsheet on the day you count it. Every one of those changes the plan, and redoing the whole thing by hand every time something moves is the job that stops happening, usually in the busiest week, which is the week you needed it.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack drafts this plan for you, from the numbers it already keeps. The orders are the sales orders on the books; the forecast is filled from your own sales history, for you to adjust; the stock is what's on the shelf right now, kept current by every batch, delivery and sale; and safety stock and minimum and maximum levels are set per item and site. Out to the horizon you choose, it works out what to make, what to buy and when, through every level of recipe, so the bread's taro paste and the chips' pouches are on the same list.

It knows shelf life, so it won't plan bread a week early, and a batch made too early for a customer's minimum days-left is flagged before you make it. It knows your work centers and their hours, so the plan doesn't promise a fourth fry day the kitchen doesn't have. What goes wrong is said in plain words: the pouches that will arrive too late, the flour that will run short, the stock that will expire before it's used. Lead times are checked against how long deliveries really take. And every suggestion is a draft you approve, never an order placed behind your back.

Recipes, batches and planning are on Standard at $99 a month, and the first 30 days are free. Your items, recipes, stock and open orders import from a spreadsheet. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

What are the steps in preparing a production plan?

Write down demand by week, decide which products are made to stock and which to order, net demand against stock and safety stock, round to whole batches, check capacity, work out materials and order the long lead times first, then schedule the week and roll the plan forward every week.

What's the difference between a production plan and a production schedule?

The plan says what and how much, usually by week, a month or more ahead. The schedule takes one week of the plan and says which day, which equipment and who.

How far ahead should a small business plan production?

At least as far as your longest lead time, so you can order what takes longest to arrive. That's often four to six weeks, reviewed every week.

What is a master production schedule?

The week-by-week table of how much of each finished product to make, worked out from demand, stock, safety stock and batch size. It's the heart of a production plan, and the materials plan is worked out from it.