Manufacturing planning software: 8 tools compared

Manufacturing planning software helps you build a production plan based on your available resources, work orders, and team capacity. Without the insight and coordination that planning software brings, your work can look fine on paper, while in reality, machines are double-booked, and orders are stacking up by the day.

However, manufacturing planning doesn’t rely on a single type of software. It covers everything from lightweight MRP tools to full ERP systems, which is exactly why matching the tool to your use case matters more than picking whichever has the best reviews or nicest UI.

This guide will help you get that fit right by breaking down:

• What manufacturing planning software does and how it fits into broader production management
• The key features and benefits worth prioritizing when you evaluate the available tools
• How the leading solutions compare and how to choose the best one for you

What is manufacturing planning software?

Manufacturing planning software helps manufacturers turn a production schedule into a plan that people, machines, and materials can work from. It takes the company’s orders, capacity, and material availability as inputs, then produces a sequence of tasks that tells you what to do and when.

You might see this functionality referred to as “resource planning,” “process planning software,” or “production scheduling software,” depending on which part of the process a tool focuses on.

In many cases, these terms cover roughly the same ground, so it’s easy to find manufacturing project management tools that fold planning into a broader system that also handles execution and reporting.

You can expect manufacturing planning software to handle and improve:

• Production scheduling by sequencing production runs against orders, production capacity, and lead times
• Resource allocation by assigning labor, equipment, and materials to specific jobs
• Sequencing and changeovers by ordering tasks based on priority, dependencies, and changeover time
• Dynamic adjustments by updating the plan when material delays, machine downtime, or rush orders throw it off
• Progress tracking by catching delays before they cascade into missed deliveries
• Traceability and quality management by tracking materials and batches, especially in regulated industries

In a food and beverage plant, for example, manufacturing planning software might be set up to run around cleaning cycles and ingredient expiration dates. In a metal fabrication shop, it might mean sequencing orders around machine changeovers and welding queues.

Whatever the context, the benefit is the same. When you have a plan that reflects the real constraints of your specific operation and its current status, you can work from a schedule that holds up on the floor, not just on paper.

Manufacturing planning software vs. spreadsheets

It’s possible to use spreadsheets to keep an eye on all these essential tasks. However, this process is error-prone, slow, and overly reliant on manual updates. Manufacturing planning software, on the other hand, keeps your planning information consistently up to date and visualizes it in a way that’s much easier to interpret.

It also flags the moment a task falls behind and shows the downstream jobs that the delay will affect. The ability to close that gap is one of the main advantages of a powerful production planning software tool.

For example, say a machine running a two-hour curing cycle breaks down mid-shift. In a spreadsheet, that delay just sits there until someone happens to notice the cell hasn’t been updated and manually checks what else depends on it.

Planning software catches the slip as soon as it happens and shows every order queued behind that machine that now needs to shift, so a scheduler can adjust before the dependent jobs miss their delivery window.

How does manufacturing planning software fit into production management?

Manufacturing planning software is the layer that turns the data gathered by production management into an executable plan.

It takes what your ERP (enterprise resource planning) or equivalent system says about orders and inventory, combines it with what’s actually free on the floor (machines, labor, open capacity), and outputs a schedule a supervisor can hand to a shift and say, “This is what we’re running today.”

That gives it a very specific role within production management as a whole. Upstream, it depends on accurate data from your ERP or inventory system to know what’s been ordered and what materials you have on hand. Downstream, it feeds into execution – the work orders, quality checks, and shipping that follow once the plan is set.

Some tools only handle manufacturing scheduling and expect order and inventory data to flow in from elsewhere. Others bundle planning with execution and reporting, so the same system that builds the schedule also tracks whether the floor is keeping up with it.

Either way, your planning software is the connective step between orders and operations that helps you track and improve your processes from run to run.

What to look for in a manufacturing planning tool (key features)

Not every project management or workflow tool handles manufacturing planning well. To find one that does, it helps to focus on core features that often determine whether a tool can support real production processes, rather than on general task management and tracking.

• Capacity planning built on real-time visibility: Manufacturing teams need to see machine, labor, and material availability before committing to a schedule.
• Dynamic rescheduling: When a machine goes down or a shipment is delayed, the tool should identify all dependent tasks affected by the issue and allow you to adjust the production plan quickly.
• Dependency and sequencing logic: Production tasks rarely happen in isolation. The tool should account for changeovers, curing times, or quality holds so the plan reflects everything that has to happen, and the order in which it has to happen.
• Integration with your existing systems: A plan is only as good as the data behind it. Look for a tool that pulls order, inventory, and machine status data from your ERP or manufacturing execution system (MES), rather than relying on manual updates.
• Inventory control that stays current: If a tool can’t see accurate inventory levels in real time, it has to build your plan on stale information. Solid inventory management belongs inside the planning tool, so crucial data doesn’t fall through the cracks.
• Progress tracking against the plan: The best planning tools flag a task falling behind before the delay cascades into everything scheduled after it.
• Scenario planning: Testing a schedule change before committing helps you catch conflicts, like double-booked equipment, before they become real problems.
• Cross-team visibility: Production, procurement, and quality should all be looking at the same plan, not separate versions that can easily drift out of sync.
• Reporting built around the KPIs you track: Manufacturing programs run on metrics like on-time delivery and throughput. The planning tool should report on those same numbers your team already reviews in a format all your stakeholders can understand.

These are the features that make the difference between a great manufacturing planning tool and one that quickly frustrates your team. They’re also the key criteria we considered when evaluating the tools below.

The 8 best manufacturing planning software tools

Manufacturing planning software isn’t a uniform category. The products you’ll come across tend to grow out of one of four different starting points, and recognizing this will give you a better idea of what each tool is built to prioritize:

• MRP (material requirements planning): These translate a production plan into the materials, labor, and inventory levels needed to execute it. They work best for smaller manufacturers who want scheduling and inventory management in one system.

• ERP (enterprise resource planning): These tools fold that same planning into a much larger platform that also covers finance, procurement, and reporting. ERP tools usually make more sense once a manufacturer has outgrown a single-purpose tool.

• APS (advanced planning and scheduling): These optimize schedules through detailed capacity planning under real-time constraints. They fit manufacturers running complex, multi-process production where it’s essential to get the sequence right.

• Flexible work management platforms: These tools aren’t manufacturing-specific, but manufacturers use them to connect planning with teams outside the shop floor, such as product development or quality control.

With that in mind, here are the eight best manufacturing planning tools and platforms.

1. Katana: Quick-to-implement MRP for small and midsize manufacturers

Best for small and midsize product manufacturers who want their new production planning system up and running quickly.

Katana centers its planning around live inventory and work order management. As materials are consumed and finished goods are produced, stock and inventory levels update automatically on the platform, so the schedule reflects what’s happening on the floor in real time.

This tool includes multi-level bills of materials to support more complex product builds, and production costs also update as materials are used. In fact, Katana can be considered an inventory management system in its own right, with batch and lot tracking that gives teams continual visibility into product lots even across storage locations.

With that level of transparency, teams can trace a faulty batch of product from raw materials to the sale, which makes a huge difference for quality management, especially in regulated industries where a product recall must move quickly. It also has native e-commerce integrations with platforms like Shopify and Amazon.

As a manufacturing resource software platform, Katana integrates production planning with demand forecasting. It also supports teams who need to coordinate outsourced manufacturing alongside in-house production, which matters when your company splits work between its own floor and co-manufacturers.

Katana differentiates itself from full ERP systems like NetSuite by prioritizing rapid setup (according to their site, most teams are live within six weeks) and native e-commerce integrations with platforms such as Shopify and Amazon.

2. MRPeasy: All-in-one MRP for manufacturers with 10 to 200 employees

Best for smaller manufacturers who need real MRP functionality without enterprise-level complexity.

MRPeasy builds production plans by balancing materials and capacity against actual demand, and lets teams reschedule production orders as priorities shift rather than adjusting the whole plan by hand. Real-time reporting tracks equipment utilization, helping manufacturers ensure on-time delivery rather than hoping for a shipment to go out when promised.

On this platform, planning is tied directly to inventory, so confirmed orders move straight to production, and inventory levels are automatically adjusted on the shop floor via the internet kiosk feature. On the resource side, it includes shop floor workforce management and labor utilization tracking, plus material requirements forecasting to keep procurement aligned with what’s being built.

MRPeasy also connects those production operations directly to accounting. Its QuickBooks Online integration syncs invoices and financial data automatically, so numbers from the shop floor don’t have to be re-entered by hand later, and a similar integration exists for Xero.

MRPeasy positions itself as a single system spanning sales, production, warehousing, procurement, and finance, rather than a planning tool bolted onto other software.

3. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: Enterprise ERP within the SAP ecosystem

Best for Agile or fast-growing manufacturers already committed to SAP that want to shed legacy IT debt.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is a SaaS platform built to manage modern factory and production operations. It operates on SAP’s high-speed HANA in-memory database and delivers a unified, real-time digital core. This connects the shop floor directly to finance, sales, and procurement teams.

As an enterprise solution, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition can manage the entire production lifecycle through highly automated modules like Real-Time Material Requirements Planning (MRP Live), Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS), Predictive MRP (pMRP), and Quality Management (QM).

For manufacturers, this edition is designed around preconfigured industry “Best Practices.” Instead of building complex software from scratch, companies immediately adopt standardized, world-class workflows.

This drastically shortens deployment times and lowers the total cost of ownership. It also contrasts with the Private Edition, which is single-tenant, giving you full ABAP extensibility and customer-controlled upgrade timing.

4. Infor: Industry-specific manufacturing ERP with a native APS engine

Best for mid-market discrete and process manufacturers who want planning logic that already matches their industry.

Infor is a global enterprise software company that builds deeply functional, industry-specific Cloud ERP systems. The company’s entire business model revolves around the idea that a truck manufacturer, a hospital, and a dairy factory should not use the exact same ERP software.

Because of this, they offer what they call Infor CloudSuites. Instead of selling raw software, they sell a specialized bundle that already includes industry-specific regulations, metrics, and workflows out of the box. This design allows companies to run a “clean core” in the cloud, receiving automatic software updates without breaking heavily customized code.

For manufacturers, one of two core engines is usually the most appropriate:

• Infor CloudSuite Industrial (CSI/SyteLine), which is a highly specialized ERP built for discrete manufacturing (e.g., medical devices, industrial machinery, fabrication). It features the native APS engine, which simultaneously addresses finite machine and labor constraints.
• Infor M3 (CloudSuite Food and Beverage / Chemical), which is a heavy-duty ERP built for complex process manufacturing. It is designed to handle multi-attribute inventory, such as tracking chemicals by potency or meat by weight variation, catch-weight processing, shelf-life sequencing, and strict allergen tracking.

5. NetSuite: Enterprise ERP with demand forecasting and shop floor control

Best for manufacturers who need production planning built into a full ERP, especially once they’ve outgrown a standalone MRP tool.

NetSuite folds demand planning into a broader enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, using integrated demand forecasting to build production schedules and adjust production capacity as demand shifts.

Shop floor control and a warehouse management app add real-time monitoring and mobile access, so managers can track work orders and machine performance without walking the floor.

The material requirements planning side of this tool includes what-if analysis, letting planners model demand shifts and evaluate alternative supply plans before committing. Supply chain snapshots show lead times, inventory costs, and production schedules together instead of as separate checks.

NetSuite says it serves companies “of every size,” but the depth of its ERP functionality tends to make more sense once a manufacturer has outgrown a single-purpose planning tool.

6. PlanetTogether: Advanced planning and scheduling with visual, dashboard-driven optimization

Best for manufacturers who’ve outgrown spreadsheet-based scheduling and need a schedule that’s actively optimized against real constraints, rather than one that’s simply logged and tracked.

PlanetTogether is built specifically as advanced planning and scheduling (APS) software. Its core function is to optimize a production schedule against business priorities, factoring in constraints that a static schedule can’t account for on its own. Finite capacity scheduling accounts for machine and labor availability, and the system publishes shop-floor-ready schedules once a plan is set.

In this tool, real-time production visibility, inventory tracking, and cloud-based dashboards give planners a live view of where the schedule stands, and manual adjustment tools let them respond to a delay or rush order without starting over. The platform integrates directly with ERP systems, including SAP, NetSuite, Kinaxis, and AVEVA, so it’s designed to sit atop an existing system rather than replace it.

PlanetTogether serves manufacturers across industries like aerospace and defense, chemical manufacturing, food and beverage, and metal fabrication, and says it supports both Fortune 500 companies and mid-market manufacturers.

7. Asprova: Advanced planning and scheduling for high-speed, multi-process production

Best for manufacturers running complex, multi-process production who need scheduling calculated at high speed across sales, manufacturing, and purchasing together.

Asprova is also a purpose-built APS software. Its core module schedules across sales, manufacturing, and purchasing in a single integrated system rather than treating each as separate, and a second module generates detailed short-term schedules at high speed using finite capacity scheduling technology, which matters most for manufacturers juggling many items and processes at once.

A third module serves as a simulation tool for long-term planning, running material requirements planning at high speed alongside the schedule. Asprova doesn’t publish specific company-size guidance, but the emphasis on multi-process scheduling and ERP integration points toward mid-to-large manufacturers with more complex production environments than a tool like Katana or MRPeasy is built for.

8. Wrike: Flexible work management for manufacturers coordinating across teams

Best for manufacturers who need MRP to connect cleanly with cross-functional work, like product development, quality, and operations.

Wrike is a robust work management and collaboration tool, providing manufacturers with a unified system for managing, orchestrating, and optimizing all the teams and processes involved in bringing products to market.

While Wrike is not a manufacturing execution system, it solves a critical problem for manufacturing organizations: keeping the plan visible and up to date for everyone with a stake in it, on the floor and off, as conditions change.

To visualize your production plan, Wrike’s Gantt charts support interactive timeline planning and drag-and-drop scheduling, and resource management features balance team workloads while surfacing capacity risks before they lead to missed deadlines.

For example, Robotics and automation manufacturer House of Design relies on this combination to manage more than 270 part-fabrication requests simultaneously, using workload charts to balance capacity across the team by role. 

Their machine shop manager alone has saved more than 20 hours a week, and can manage 100% more jobs through the fabrication process as a result.

“We love the ‘Snapshots’ feature of the Wrike Gantt chart. When we have weekly client meetings, we are able to take a snapshot of the Gantt chart that’s functional, scrollable, and zoomable. Clients love knowing that they can drill down into details or stay high level. The flexibility Wrike provides is a competitive advantage.”

Chad Svedin, Project Manager

Wrike also includes project and portfolio-level dashboards, so that manufacturers can turn production data into a live view of status and risk. Meanwhile, our intuitive workflow automation features handle the routing, classification, and assignment work that would otherwise eat into planning time.

For manufacturers juggling product lifecycle work, like new product introduction or engineering change management, alongside production planning, Wrike’s real strength lies in keeping engineering, operations, quality, and business teams aligned on the same plan.

Wrike’s reach extends through integrations too: the platform connects with more than 400 apps, including PLM, ERP, and supply chain tools, so a schedule built in Wrike doesn’t have to live apart from the specialized systems already running the floor.

How to choose the right manufacturing planning software

Picking the right manufacturing planning software comes down to matching the tool to how your production actually runs, rather than picking whichever option ranks highest or looks most familiar.

As you compare the tools that might work for your team, ask yourself these questions:

• How much are you producing, and how big is your operation? Lean operations often get more value from lightweight tools like Katana or MRPeasy, whereas larger or multi-site operations need ERP-scale planning instead.
• How complex is your scheduling? If you’re juggling many items, processes, and constraints at once, purpose-built APS software like PlanetTogether or Asprova is a good fit. Simpler runs may not need that level of optimization.
• How much visibility do you need beyond the shop floor? If your planning has to bring in product development, quality, or business teams directly, a flexible platform like Wrike, with shared dashboards and role-based views, likely serves you better than a tool built only for production scheduling.
• What does your planning software need to connect to? Some tools sit on top of an ERP system, some replace it, and some, like Wrike, plug into what your teams already use, connecting to ERP, PLM, and supply chain tools through native integrations.
• How fast do you need this running, and what technical resources do you have? Lightweight tools can launch in weeks; ERP and APS systems take longer. Wrike uses a library of project management templates and features like Excel import to help you get up and running quickly.
• Do inventory and BOM management need to live in the same system? MRP tools bundle these features together by default, but if you already manage inventory elsewhere, you may not need a tool that duplicates it.
• What’s your budget, and how is pricing structured? Usage-based, per-seat pricing looks very different from enterprise licensing, and the gap between them is often bigger than the feature gap.
• Does your industry have compliance or documentation requirements? Some industries need regulatory tracking, traceability, and audit-ready documentation built into the tool’s quality management side, not handled separately.

There are many different angles to consider when you’re choosing tools, and no universal answer. The right fit depends on how complex your production actually is, and how many parts of the business need to see the plan beyond the manufacturing team.

How Wrike supports manufacturing planning

So far, we’ve looked at manufacturing planning and management broadly, and shown where different types of tools fit in. Now let’s look at how our platform, Wrike, supports manufacturing planning for teams where departments like sales, R&D, quality assurance, and HR need to stay in close communication with the production floor.

Wrike is an all-in-one tool for cross-functional teams. This means our platform can be set up with:

• Custom workflows built around manufacturing terminology: Wrike lets teams define item types and workflow stages from scratch, and rule-based approval workflows automatically route sign-offs to quality assurance, compliance, or whichever department owns that step.
• Blueprint templates for repeatable processes: Once you’ve perfected a workflow, including handoffs to R&D or quality, save it as a blueprint and reuse it for the next launch, without renegotiating who owns each step.
• Structured intake through custom request forms: New work comes in via customizable forms that capture what’s needed up front, whether it originates on the shop floor or from sales, R&D, or another department.
• Visibility across plants and product lines: Multiple project dashboards, personalized by role, let sales, R&D, HR, and the plant floor each see the plan view that matters to them, without splintering into separate records.
• Real-time collaboration and technical review: With Whiteboards, R&D and engineering can work through a design change with the production team visually, and proofing tools let teams review technical drawings directly against the plan.
• Reporting built around the KPIs that matter: Wrike’s budget tracking covers labor, materials, overhead, and expenses, and portfolio-wide analytics show performance across every active project, keeping finance and the plant aligned.
• Resource and capacity tools built to catch overload early: Timesheets and capacity tracking reveal an overloaded team, on the plant floor or in engineering, while AI-based risk prediction flags projects likely to slip.

Three manufacturers already using Wrike show what that list looks like day-to-day:

• The world’s largest chip designer, NVIDIA, relies on Wrike to connect its telemetry tools, providing real-time dashboards for data centers accessible to executives and the CEO. This lets their team coordinate massive worldwide deployments with hundreds of personnel drastically faster and more easily compared to their previous approach of using disjointed tools and spreadsheets.
• Outdoor equipment manufacturer MTD Products chose Wrike over Microsoft Project, Trello, and Workfront largely for the structure request forms bring to intake. As Chief Product Engineer Ryan Cmich put it, Wrike “gives me the confidence that when something comes up, whether it’s an issue, a new feature need, or some task, everyone is good about getting it into the system and it won’t be forgotten.”
• Multinational technology and engineering giant Siemens uses Wrike to standardize processes and automate global project delivery. The company executes hundreds of small and large projects that require constant cross-team collaboration — something Wrike specializes in. The intuitive interface ensures adoption by these teams, while custom workflows standardize processes while preserving flexibility for local work.

For teams that need flexibility in their planning, or for those whose priority is to connect the manufacturing floor to the rest of the company, Wrike can be a great fit. It doesn’t leave departments outside manufacturing to learn a specialized tool they’ll never fully understand, and manufacturing teams get an up-to-date view into the other departments whenever work elsewhere in the company will affect their plan.

When you’re ready to see how Wrike could work for your manufacturing team, book a demo or try Wrike for free.