What is PlanetTogether? Modules, integrations and alternatives
PlanetTogether is an advanced planning and scheduling (APS) software product that builds finite-capacity production schedules on top of data from an ERP system. Planners use it to sequence jobs across machines, labor and materials, and to test what-if scenarios. It is typically deployed beside an ERP rather than replacing it.
Also known as: PlanetTogether APS, Planet Together
PlanetTogether sits in the planning layer between the ERP and the shop floor. The ERP holds orders, routings, bills of material and inventory, but most ERPs schedule with infinite capacity or simple backward scheduling. An APS takes those same orders and resolves them against real constraints: machine availability, setups, tooling, labor skills, material arrival and calendars.
Typical users are discrete and process manufacturers with complex routings, many setups or shared bottleneck resources, where a spreadsheet or the ERP's native scheduler no longer produces a feasible plan. Planners and schedulers work in a graphical Gantt-style interface, drag and rearrange jobs, and compare scenarios before publishing a plan.
In a manufacturing stack it normally reads from the ERP (and sometimes an MES), computes a schedule, and writes dates and sequences back or exposes them to the shop floor. The quality of the result depends heavily on the quality of the ERP master data it consumes: routings, run rates, setup times and calendars.
Modules and capabilities
Production scheduling
Finite-capacity scheduling of jobs and operations across resources, with Gantt-style editing.
Constraint-based planning
Honors machine, labor, tooling and material constraints when sequencing work.
Scenario and what-if analysis
Create copies of the schedule to test rush orders, downtime or capacity changes before committing.
Order promising support
Helps estimate realistic completion dates against current load.
Rules and optimization
Configurable dispatch rules and optimization settings to favor due date, setup reduction or throughput.
ERP and data integration
Import and export of orders, routings, inventory and schedule results with the ERP.
Reporting and dashboards
Views of resource load, late orders and schedule performance.
Integrations and data access
ERP data exchange
Pulls manufacturing orders, routings, bills of material, inventory and calendars from the ERP and returns scheduled dates and sequences.
Database and file import
Commonly fed through database views, flat files or staging tables in addition to direct connectors.
APIs
Provides programmatic interfaces for automating import, scheduling runs and export; check the current API documentation for specifics.
MES and shop floor
Schedules can be published to an MES or dispatch lists, and actual progress fed back to re-plan.
Analytics
Schedule output can be exported to BI tools for load and on-time analysis.
Strengths
- Focused scheduling tool that works alongside many different ERPs
- Interactive Gantt-style editing that planners find approachable
- Scenario planning to compare options before publishing
- Handles finite-capacity constraints that ERP schedulers often ignore
Limitations
- Result quality depends on accurate routings, run rates and setup data in the ERP
- Adds another system to integrate, maintain and train planners on
- Not a full supply chain planning suite; demand planning and network planning are separate concerns
- Gains are smaller for simple, low-mix operations
Where AI helps PlanetTogether users
- - Cleaning and validating routing and run-rate data before it feeds the scheduler, flagging outliers for review
- - Explaining in plain language why a job is late or which constraint drove a sequence
- - Comparing actual cycle times from the shop floor with planned values and suggesting master data corrections
- - Summarizing daily schedule changes and exceptions for planners and supervisors
- - Natural-language questions over load, late orders and capacity, answered from read-only exports
Evaluating PlanetTogether? Check these
- Test with your own messy routings and real setup matrices, not vendor sample data
- Check how schedules are written back to the ERP and whether that is automatic or manual
- Ask how re-scheduling is triggered when a machine goes down mid-shift
- Confirm how multi-site and shared resources are modeled
- Plan the master data cleanup effort before go-live, because it often exceeds the software effort
- Compare against your ERP's own advanced scheduling option before buying a separate tool
Common alternatives: Siemens Opcenter APS, Asprova, DELMIA Ortems, Kinaxis Maestro, Infor SyteLine planner, Spreadsheet scheduling.
Frequently asked questions
What is PlanetTogether used for?
PlanetTogether is used for advanced planning and scheduling. It takes orders and routings from an ERP and builds a finite-capacity schedule that respects machines, labor, tooling and material availability, letting planners test scenarios before releasing the plan to the shop floor.
Does PlanetTogether replace my ERP?
No. It is a planning and scheduling layer that normally reads data from an ERP and returns schedule results. The ERP remains the system of record for orders, inventory, costing and financials.
Which ERPs does PlanetTogether work with?
It is designed to work with a range of ERP systems through data import and export, database access and APIs. Whether a specific ERP has a ready connector or needs custom mapping should be confirmed with the vendor or an integrator.
What are the main alternatives to PlanetTogether?
Common alternatives include Siemens Opcenter APS, Asprova and DELMIA Ortems for shop-level scheduling, and Kinaxis Maestro for broader supply chain planning. Some ERPs also include their own finite-capacity scheduling modules that may be sufficient.
Can AI help with PlanetTogether schedules?
AI is useful around the scheduler: validating master data, explaining late orders, summarizing exceptions and answering planner questions from read-only data. The scheduling engine itself remains the source of the plan, and any write-back should stay under human approval.
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