Production planning is a necessity in today’s fast paced environment. With the prevalence of made to order production, multiple sales sources from delivery to mobile and POS orders, restaurants must operate with maximum efficiency.

A key component to production efficiency is the ability to predict, plan and prepare production of ingredients and not just finished items.

Predict, Plan and Implement

Production Planner is a tool that allows you to predict demand based on recent trends, while allowing local managers to review and amend plans based on local factors such as events and weather. Finalised plans take into consideration recipe and production requirements to generate a production plan for ingredients and products throughout the day.

These plans can then drive supplier orders or transfers from central production units, produce a schedule for stocking shelves and grab and go stations and most importantly produce a schedule for the kitchen to prepare food.

Integrated with the Kitchen Management Solution, tickets can be generated in a timely manner to streamline production. Taking into consideration the actual sales trends on the day and utilising shelf life of items, the plan can then automatically adjust to meet the real demand, reducing wastage, and improving service times and efficiency throughout production.

How does it work?

Production items, for example Cooked Chicken, can be used in multiple products, such as a Chicken Wrap, Chicken Salad or Chicken and Rice Box. In advance the system will look at recent sales trends, use the recipe data to predict the quantities needed throughout the day and generate a plan.

The Restaurant Manager can then review these plans, amend them in bulk by considering changes in predicted net sales, which then amends the entire day’s production plan. The manager can also amend individual items where demand may be expected to vary on a product-by-product basis. Once happy with the plan it can be approved.

Approved plans can then drive the supplier ordering process so that the store has the right amount of ingredients in stock for any given day.

When the day arrives, several tools aid the store manager to efficiently manage stock levels. Reports can be produced on mobile units or paper and handed to staff to stock shelves and fridges, for the day or for periods of the day for example, before breakfast, before lunch and before evening.

Kitchen staff can see the expected production requirements throughout the day either in printed form, on screen or via automated tickets on to their kitchen screens,

How can it be customised?

Stores can have multiple production plans, each focusing on an activity or group of products. For example, a drinks preparation plan and a grill plan.

The plans can each use customisable periods with start and end times, for example the drinks plan can use breakfast lunch and dinner, but the grill will work on a 15-minute or 30-minute schedule throughout the day.

Products can be grouped together in different ways based on production requirements and times and how they relate to the individual plans.

The period of sales history that is used to predict sales can be amended for each operation, showing more than one period, so you can see averages over the last 3 Mondays as well as last Monday.

With these settings the production planner can be configured to meet the needs of the operation and fine tune production for your specific operation.

The benefits are huge

The Production Planner takes some of the guess work out of the equation, provides an automated way of planning production and inventory levels but without removing the human element entirely.

The processes that took time to prepare are done automatically, freeing up staff and reducing labour in the planning, reducing human error, improving communications and the practicalities of preparing for customer demand.

Being well prepared means, you can serve more customers quicker, improve sales, increase output and ultimately increase margins from your store.

Margins are further improved through the reduction in wastage and labour.

We’re committed to understanding our clients and the sector they’re operating in to build Centegra Plus into the total solution it is today. 



If you want to transform the operations of your restaurant kitchens, talk to us today to find out more.


The future is Enterprise Centric. The future is Centegra Plus.