Planning

The Planning dashboard is your command center for orchestrating production planning. It brings together forecasts, MRP runs, shortage review, and schedule revisions into one view so you can see what needs attention and take action without hunting through separate pages.

Planning Dashboard

Navigate to Planning in the sidebar to see the command dashboard. Five cards show the state of your planning workflow at a glance.

Forecast Scope

Shows whether forecasts exist and are current.

• Ready means forecasts are loaded and you can proceed to MRP.
• Action Needed means no forecasts exist yet. Click View Forecasts to create one.

MRP Run

Shows the latest material requirements planning run.

• Complete means MRP ran successfully with no shortages.
• Action Needed means either no run has been done, or the latest run found shortages. Click Run MRP to start a new run.
• The card shows a constraint count (e.g., “3 shortages”) when shortages were found.

Shortage Review

Shows open shortages that need resolution.

• Complete means no open shortages remain.
• Action Needed means shortages are waiting for review. Click Review Shortages to see them in your inbox.
• Waiting means no MRP run has been done yet, so there are no shortages to review.
• The card shows a count of critical shortages when any exist.

Schedule Revision

Shows draft schedule scenarios and their publish readiness.

• Ready means no draft scenarios exist. You can create one.
• Action Needed means one or more draft scenarios are waiting to be published or resolved. Click Open Schedule to work on them.
• The card shows a constraint count (e.g., “1 blocked”) when blockers prevent publishing.

Active Blockers

The bottom card aggregates all blocking constraints across every stage. It shows a total count plus a breakdown by type:

• Material — MRP shortages (not enough raw materials).
• Capacity — schedule conflicts (double-booked work centers, missing assignments).
• Compliance — compliance filing deadlines approaching or overdue.

When there are no blockers, the card shows “No active blockers.” The blocker counts refresh automatically every 30 seconds.

Resume Flow

The amber Resume Flow button appears in the top right of the dashboard. It reads the current state of all cards and suggests the most useful next action:

• Run MRP — when forecasts exist but no MRP run has been done, or the latest run is stale.
• Review Shortages — when MRP found shortages that haven’t been addressed.
• Publish Revision — when a draft scenario is ready to publish.
• Create Revision — when no draft scenarios exist and the schedule is clean.

The button is hidden when no clear next step applies.

Card Actions

Each card has an action button that opens the relevant page in a new browser tab. You keep the dashboard open alongside detail work so you can return to it and check overall status at any time.

What-If Feasibility Tool

The What-If tool lets you check whether you can make a target quantity of a finished good before committing to a schedule. It answers: “If I want to produce 50 cases of this product, do I have the materials?”

Running a Check

1. Navigate to Tools > What-If in the sidebar (or use the embedded panel in the schedule revision flow).
2. Select a Case BOM from the dropdown. This defines the finished-good packaging spec: which recipe, which bottle, how many per case.
3. Enter a target quantity in cases.
4. Click Check Feasibility.

Reading Results

The results panel shows three sections:

Hero metric — the headline number. For example, “32 of 50 cases” means you can make 32 cases with current inventory, but you asked for 50. The verdict banner below tells you whether the target is achievable:

• Green banner (“Can make 50 cases”) — you have enough materials.
• Red banner (“Can only make 32 of 50 cases — limited by Neutral Grain Spirit”) — you are short on something, and the limiting material is named.

Material bars — a visual breakdown of each ingredient’s availability. Bars are sorted worst-to-best:

• Red (shortage) — not enough to meet the requirement.
• Yellow (tight) — enough, but less than 20% buffer.
• Green (OK) — sufficient inventory.

Each bar shows the required vs. available quantity and the UOM.

Constraint summary — three rows at the bottom: Materials, Capacity, and Compliance. Each shows a count of issues. In the current release, capacity checks require a planned date and will be available in a future update.

Embedded in Schedule

When you are working on a schedule revision (at Calendar > Schedule), the what-if tool is available as a collapsible Feasibility Check panel. This lets you check material availability for a batch order without leaving the scheduling flow.

Demand Horizon

The Demand Horizon page shows your production demand organized into three time windows. Each window represents a different level of commitment and planning detail.

Navigate to Planning > Demand Horizon (or click the back link from the horizon page to return to the main Planning dashboard).

The Three Horizons

Locked (2 weeks) Near-term firm commitments. You can see individual batches with their scheduled dates and quantities. Changes to the schedule within this window require a CalVer revision with a stated reason. This prevents casual changes to near-term commitments that downstream teams (purchasing, floor operations) are already acting on.

Firm (3 months) Medium-term planning commitments. Demand is shown as weekly aggregates: total cases planned per week and how many batches make up that total. These commitments are expected to hold but can be adjusted without the locked-window friction.

Directional (12 months) Long-range demand signals. Monthly bars show rough volume by month. Use this view for capacity planning and raw material procurement lead times. The further out the signal, the less reliable — the visual opacity on this tile is intentionally lower to communicate that.

Navigating Horizons

The three tiles across the top of the page are the navigation. Click a tile to filter the detail view below to that horizon’s timeframe. The active tile gets an amber highlight. No page reload happens — the switch is instant.

Lock Semantics

When you publish a schedule scenario that includes entries within the locked 2-week window, vestl requires a CalVer revision with a stated reason. This is enforced server-side:

• The publish readiness check flags entries in the locked window as “locked_window_change” blockers.
• These blockers appear in the readiness panel alongside other blockers (missing work centers, double bookings).
• Unlike hard blockers, locked-window blockers can be overridden: provide a publish reason explaining why the change is necessary, and the publish will proceed.
• Hard blockers (missing work centers, double bookings) always prevent publishing and cannot be overridden.

This means planners can still make urgent changes within the locked window, but they must document why. The reason is captured in the publish history for audit and team communication.

Field Reference

Dashboard Cards

What-If Tool

Demand Horizon