Supply Planning
From capacity chaos to production confidence.
Blue Ridge Supply Planning automates Master Production Scheduling and Rough-Cut Capacity Planning for manufacturers — turning forecasts, customer orders, and safety stock into a daily, capacity-aware production plan that recalculates as conditions change.
In the past we lumped all safety stock together and treated all of our SKUs equally. Now with Blue Ridge we have the ability to make smarter safety stock decisions and increase inventory of the winning SKUs and decrease inventory of slower-moving SKUs.
Capabilities
Demand, capacity, and materials – on one plan
Replace manual scheduling spreadsheets with one connected engine that recalculates planned order releases daily, surfaces capacity constraints before they bite, and supports make-to-stock, make-to-order, and assemble-to-order in a single workflow.
Daily master production scheduling
Automatically generates planned order releases from BOM, forecast, customer orders, and safety stock – recalculating daily so production stays in sync with demand.
Rough-cut capacity planning
Spot where planned orders exceed available capacity instantly. Drill up or down by line, plant, or time period to optimize before bottlenecks become disruptions.
Clear-to-build validation & alerts
Validate clear-to-build before commitment and surface manufacturing exceptions automatically – so planners spend their time fixing what matters, not building schedules from scratch.
Smarter safety stock & replenishment
Synchronize replenishment with live production schedules to protect against demand variability and unpredictable lead times — without the carrying costs of excess safety stock
FAQS
Your questions, answered
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Reach out to our team and we'll get you the answers you need.
Supply planning is the process of determining what needs to be produced, when, and in what quantity to meet customer demand without overbuilding inventory or overwhelming capacity. It connects demand forecasts, customer orders, and material availability into a single production plan, recalculating as conditions change so the operation stays ahead of disruption rather than reacting to it.
Demand planning forecasts what customers will buy. Supply planning takes that forecast and works out how to fulfil it: what to produce, when to produce it, and whether the capacity and materials are available to do so. The two disciplines work together; demand planning sets the signal, supply planning turns it into an executable production schedule.
Rough-cut capacity planning (RCCP) is the process of checking whether planned production orders can actually be fulfilled given available capacity across lines, plants, and time periods. It sits between the master production schedule and detailed scheduling, giving planners early visibility into capacity bottlenecks before they become production disruptions. Catching constraints at this stage is significantly cheaper than discovering them on the shop floor.
Spreadsheets can't recalculate daily across thousands of SKUs, model capacity constraints in real time, or surface exceptions automatically. Supply planning software generates planned order releases from live demand and inventory data, validates clear-to-build before commitment, and alerts planners to capacity issues before they affect the production schedule. The result is fewer errors, faster decisions, and a production plan that stays current.
Blue Ridge Supply Planning takes the demand signal from forecasting and translates it into a capacity-aware master production schedule, recalculating daily as demand, inventory, and customer orders shift. It supports make-to-stock, make-to-order, and assemble-to-order workflows in a single environment, so manufacturers with mixed production modes don't need separate tools for each.
Blue Ridge surfaces capacity constraints through rough-cut capacity planning, giving planners visibility into where planned orders exceed available capacity across lines, plants, and time periods. They can drill up or down by line or period to optimize the schedule before a bottleneck becomes a disruption, rather than discovering the problem after the line has already stopped.
How It Fits
Manufacturing planning, woven into Supply Chain Intelligence
Demand Planning forecasts; Replenishment orders; MEIO synchronizes the network. Supply Planning extends that intelligence into the plant – turning the demand signal into a capacity-aware production plan.
As part of Blue Ridge Supply Chain Intelligence, every order reflects forecast, inventory, and supply informing each other continuously – so one explainable plan drives every buying decision across the network.
Who It’s For
Built for manufacturers and hybrid operators
Supply Planning is for manufacturers and distributors who run their own production – including hybrid operators where make-to-stock, make-to-order, and assemble-to-order all live on the same shop floor.
Automotive
Automotive parts manufacturers plan thousands of SKUs across long lead times and tight customer commitments – Supply Planning keeps the production schedule synchronized with the demand and inventory plans driving downstream service.
HVAC
HVAC OEMs and component manufacturers face seasonal swings, long lead times, and complex BOMs – Supply Planning generates a capacity-aware production plan that smooths peaks and protects channel commitments.
Customer Stories
Hear from the businesses making every decision count
"Blue Ridge has the best interface and analytics you would need as a professional purchasing buyer"
Thelma Chavez
Director of Operations
Jackson Systems is a six-division HVAC distributor generating roughly $40M in annual revenue. Before Blue Ridge, the planning team reviewed every SKU manually – a process measured in days, not hours. Exception-based planning compressed that work, freed cash from excess stock, and pushed service levels into a range the team had never sustained before.
~$1M
Drop in inventory on hand
98.1%
Service level, up from 88%
“Blue Ridge has been the most user-friendly, results-driven system that I've seen so far. Our whole planning and buying team absolutely loves it.”
Stephanie Hunn
Senior Manager, Planning
Before Blue Ridge, ISN was struggling to optimize fill rate and inventory turns simultaneously. The team evaluated multiple vendors and chose Blue Ridge for the onboarding, training, and ongoing system improvements baked into the relationship. They went live and saw measurable results from the first operating cycle forward – with the LifeLine team supporting every step.
~99%
Forecast accuracy maintained
50%
Improvement in fill rates over twelve months
“The goal wasn't just to reduce inventory. It was to have what we need, when we need it. That's exactly what Blue Ridge helped us do.”
David Mays
VP of Operations
West Virginia Electric Supply is an electrical distributor running eight branches on the Eclipse ERP. Centralizing inventory and moving to data-led replenishment let the team strip out the dead stock that had quietly accumulated for years – while service to contractors and customers held above 96% and the planning organization shifted from firefighting to forward-looking decisions.
70–80%
Reduction in dead stock
96.3%
Service level to contractors and customers
“The ERP handles transactions. Blue Ridge handles the intelligence. That's the difference.”
Brad Smith
SVP, Procurement & Sales
Southwest Traders supplies national restaurant chains – Panera, Einstein, Starbucks, Panda Express – from a buying team of nine to eleven working on an AS/400 ERP. Blue Ridge cut order-build time from days to a few hours, held service levels at 99.95% across blue-chip customers, and let the company onboard new brands without adding to the planning team.
99.95%
Service level across national restaurant brands
~18.5
Days on hand
