Production planning without spreadsheet schedules or manual coordination
Production teams rebuild schedules by hand, chase material availability across procurement and inventory, and coordinate the shop floor through tools that don't talk. Piston runs planning, BOMs, capacity, and manufacturing as one system.
Material requirements you can actually trust
Piston calculates net requirements from live production and inventory data. One source, always current.
Calculate net material requirements from schedules and live stock positions
Recommend procurement aligned with supplier lead times and production timing
Surface coverage gaps and procurement risks early enough to act
Schedules that hold when orders change
Piston builds and adjusts production schedules from live order and capacity data. The plan moves as the shop floor does.
Create and update schedules from order demand and capacity constraints
Adjust schedules dynamically when orders change or materials shift
Coordinate work orders across production sites, lines, and teams
Numbers when production runs on Piston
-40
%
Shorter planning cycles
The agent recalculates requirements in real time
-50
%
Fewer material shortages
Gaps flagged by the agent before production
+20
%
Better capacity use
Schedules optimized as orders shift
Key production planning system features
BOM management
Define and maintain multi-level bills of materials with components, sub-assemblies, and operations — keeping production references accurate and synchronized across engineering, procurement, and manufacturing teams.
Capacity planning
Model available production capacity against confirmed and forecast demand — identifying bottlenecks early and enabling teams to adjust schedules before delays propagate through delivery commitments.
Multi-site production coordination
Coordinate manufacturing across multiple plants and production sites — sharing capacity, routing work orders between facilities, and maintaining visibility across every site from one operational workspace.
Production scheduling
Schedule work orders across available resources, machines, and production lines — balancing workload against capacity, delivery commitments, and material availability in a single planning view.
Work order management
Create, track, and close manufacturing work orders with full visibility into progress, consumed materials, and reported labor — keeping production performance visible and operational records accurate.
Make-to-order workflows
Configure production flows triggered directly by customer orders — ensuring manufacturing starts with confirmed demand and that every work order is traceable back to its originating sale.
MRP / material requirements planning
Calculate material requirements automatically from production demand and open orders — generating purchasing and transfer recommendations to ensure components arrive before they are needed on the shop floor.
Manufacturing execution tracking
Monitor production operations in real time as work orders move through each step — capturing output, scrap, quality checks, and operator inputs at the point of execution.
Built for companies that produce goods.
Where physical operations meet real constraints.
Food and beverages
Coordinate production runs, batch traceability, supplier quality, and regulatory compliance in one operational workspace. Piston keeps your production floor and back-office data synchronized, with AI agents handling the routine coordination work.
Distribution
Manage orders, stock, suppliers, and customer relationships in one operational workspace. Piston keeps your sales pipeline and supply chain in sync, with AI agents handling the routine coordination work.
Manufacturing
Run production, inventory, procurement, and finance in one operational workspace. Piston keeps shop-floor reality and back-office data in sync, with AI agents handling the repetitive coordination work.
FAQ
Does Piston automate production decisions without human validation?
No. Piston assists sales and operations teams by centralizing order visibility, automating routing decisions, detecting fulfillment exceptions, and coordinating invoicing workflows, but operational decisions remain fully controlled by teams. Sales managers, operations teams, and customer service still validate order priorities, manage fulfillment exceptions, approve high-value orders, and handle customer commercial conditions. The objective is not to automate order management blindly. The objective is to reduce the manual coordination overhead created by fragmented order entry, disconnected fulfillment systems, and repetitive invoicing administration.
How much manual production coordination can teams reduce?
Many industrial sales and operations teams still re-enter orders manually, coordinate fulfillment through emails and spreadsheets, and generate invoices separately from operational events. Piston reduces this overhead by connecting order capture, fulfillment routing, inventory allocation, and invoicing inside one operational workflow synchronized in real time. Orders, stock reservations, fulfillment status, and billing remain aligned automatically instead of requiring manual coordination across sales, warehouse, logistics, and finance teams. Teams spend less time processing orders administratively and more time managing customer priorities and operational exceptions.
What makes Piston different from a traditional production planning ERP?
Traditional ERP order management workflows are often rigid, fragmented, and slow to reflect real operational activity. Orders are entered manually. Fulfillment routing depends on spreadsheets. Invoicing happens separately from delivery confirmation. Customer service lacks visibility into operational status. Piston connects order management directly to inventory, warehouse, production, logistics, and finance operations inside one shared workspace. Sales teams, operations, and customer service maintain real-time visibility across order status, fulfillment progress, and payment activity without relying on disconnected systems and manual status updates.
Can Piston support complex make-to-order and industrial manufacturing environments?
Yes. Piston is designed for industrial B2B environments where orders depend on customer-specific pricing, volume conditions, production dependencies, multi-site fulfillment, and commercial approval workflows. The platform supports make-to-order operations, blanket orders, customer price books, EDI integrations, 3PL coordination, and order-to-cash tracking across complex industrial sales environments. Operational teams can adapt order workflows according to customer requirements and operational constraints instead of forcing order activity into rigid ERP processes.
Why do industrial companies modernize production planning workflows?
As industrial B2B operations grow more complex, order coordination becomes increasingly difficult to manage manually. Sales and operations teams often rely on spreadsheets, manual ERP entry, email-based fulfillment coordination, and disconnected invoicing workflows to process customer orders. This creates entry errors, fulfillment delays, billing mistakes, and poor visibility across sales, operations, and finance teams. Industrial companies modernize order management to centralize order operations, automate fulfillment routing, improve order-to-cash performance, and give teams real-time visibility across the full order lifecycle without increasing coordination overhead.
