Guide · Variance
Production plan vs actual: what was planned, what was made, and why they differ.
A plan that is never compared with output stops being believed. Daily plan-versus-actual is how a plant learns which numbers in the plan are wrong.
Plan vs actual compares, for every SKU and every day, the quantity planned with the quantity made, and records a reason for each gap that matters.
What a daily plan vs actual report should show
| Column | Source |
|---|---|
| SKU and line | The plan |
| Planned quantity | The frozen daily plan, not a later revision |
| Actual quantity | Production lots by manufacturing date, from plant records |
| Variance | Actual − planned, in units and as a percentage |
| Reason | Machine down, material short, manpower, quality hold, plan changed |
Why freeze the plan
If the plan is edited after the fact to match output, variance is always zero and nothing is learned. Freeze days once they are committed, and judge actuals against the frozen version.
How to use the variance
- Review the largest gaps each morning, not every row.
- Group reasons over the month: the most common one is the real constraint.
- If one SKU is always under plan, its standard rate is probably wrong; fix the rate, not the people.
- Feed corrected rates back into capacity planning.
A bakery example
The cookie line is planned for a full shift but repeatedly falls short on days after a changeover from rusk. The reason column shows “changeover”; the fix is to plan changeover time, not to push the line harder. See also capacity planning in production.
How Production & Procurement does it
Production & Procurement rebuilds the plant’s planning workbook as one live system. Firm orders, read from the plant’s own records, become a suggested plan: each working day, due SKUs take line capacity in priority order and pull-ahead fills the hours left. Planners can override any cell and freeze days already committed. The plan flows into a three-month projection, a raw-material plan net of stock and in-transit, a packaging plan from the packaging BOM, and a procurement list with what to order, how much and by when. Machine load and manpower are checked against the plan, red above 100% and amber above 85%. A digital twin of the site shows bins, lines and gates live, through the past month and seven days ahead, and says “not recorded” where data is missing. Every screen downloads to Excel, and plant systems are read, never written.
Questions
What is production plan vs actual?
A daily comparison, per SKU, of the quantity planned with the quantity made, with a reason recorded for each significant gap.
Where should actual production figures come from?
From the plant’s own production lot records by manufacturing date, so nobody has to retype them.
Why should the daily plan be frozen?
So actuals are judged against what was committed. A plan edited after the fact always shows zero variance and teaches nothing.
See it on your own data. Production & Procurement — Plan the line, buy on time. Book a 30-minute working session with an engineer.