Case studiesManufacturing
A drag-and-drop production scheduler in NetSuite
Work orders broken into operations on a timeline per work center, so planners schedule the shop floor by dragging blocks instead of editing records.
- Manufacturing
- NetSuite manufacturing
- routings
- work centers
The problem
Planners scheduled production in spreadsheets, then typed dates back into NetSuite work orders. The spreadsheet was always out of date, and the shop floor could not see what was next.
What we built
- Operations as schedulable blocks. When a work order is created, its routing is broken into one record per operation, each with a work center, a start and an end.
- A timeline screen inside NetSuite. Each work center is a row. Planners drag operations to a new time or a different work center, and the change saves straight to NetSuite.
- Shop-floor view. Operators see only their own work and their team’s, with notes and the materials each job needs.
- Printouts. Bills of materials and pick lists print as PDFs from the same screen.
- One switch for two ways of working. A settings record turns the shop-floor login on or off without a code change.
The same design was reused for other manufacturers.
What we would do differently today
The early versions used a commercial UI library and a simple PIN login. A rebuild today would use an open-source timeline, role-based access instead of PINs, capacity checks so two jobs cannot overlap on one machine, and a JSON API with conflict detection, so two planners cannot overwrite each other.
Why it matters for you
NetSuite holds the right data for scheduling; it just does not show it the way planners think. A focused screen on top of standard records works on the same data your team already keeps.