Planning & Forecasting
Your shop schedule changes faster than you can reprint it.
Every morning starts with the same question: what’s the real schedule today? Materials arrive late. Customer priorities shift. Machines break down. And suddenly the production plan you stayed late to build is fiction by 9 AM. Without real-time visibility into capacity, demand, and materials, your team firefights instead of manufactures.
Core Capabilities
Four planning capabilities that actually sync
Rover Planning isn’t a single module. It’s four integrated systems that share one real-time data layer, so material requirements, production schedules, capacity constraints, and forecasts don’t drift out of alignment.
Material Requirements Planning (MRP)
MRP determines what materials you need, how much, and when. But unlike systems that batch-process overnight, Rover MRP updates continuously as orders come in, inventory moves, or production completes. You’re not planning around stale numbers.
Multi-Source Demand
Drive MRP from actual sales orders, work orders, master schedules, forecasts, or independent demand. You control what triggers material planning.
Bucketless Storage
All supply and demand data stored in time-phased records, not fixed period buckets. See requirements at daily or hourly granularity if needed.
Exception Reporting
Automated alerts for late orders, excess inventory, or material shortages. Your planner sees what needs action today, not every part in the system.
Requirement Pegging
Trace any component requirement up to its parent assembly or top-level sales order. Know exactly why you need a part and what depends on it.
Master Production Schedule (MPS)
Customers expect fast delivery, but you can’t build everything to order without blowing lead times. MPS lets you plan production before orders arrive, balancing forecasted demand against actual sales to keep the shop loaded without overbuilding.
Forecast Integration
Load sales forecasts directly into MPS. As actual orders consume forecast, the system adjusts production plans automatically.
Planning Bills for Product Families
Forecast at the family level, then break down by percentage to specific SKUs. Plan strategically without over-committing to individual variants.
Available-to-Promise (ATP) Calculation
Real-time ATP based on scheduled production and existing inventory. Sales can commit to delivery dates with confidence, not guesswork.
Multi-Level Planning & Scheduling
Plan across multiple production levels, from finished goods down through sub-assemblies. Schedule strategically, not just part-by-part.
Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP)
Materials aren’t the only constraint. Machines and people have limits too. CRP shows you where bottlenecks will form before they disrupt production, so you can rebalance loads, adjust schedules, or add shifts strategically.
Graphical Capacity View
Visual load charts by work center. Instantly see where you’re under-utilized or over-committed across the production schedule.
Bottleneck Identification
CRP flags work centers running over capacity before jobs miss deadlines. Address constraints proactively, not after overtime starts.
What-If Scenario Analysis
Test schedule changes before committing. See the impact of adding a job, shifting production dates, or adjusting work center assignments.
Prevent Unbudgeted Overtime
Overtime isn’t a planning strategy. CRP shows you when loads exceed standard capacity, giving you time to adjust instead of scrambling.
Forecasting
You can’t plan production without some view of future demand. Rover Forecasting uses historical sales or usage patterns to project forward, then lets you adjust by period to account for seasonality, trends, or specific business factors.
Historical Basis Options
Base forecasts on past sales for finished goods or past usage for components. The system adapts to how each part behaves in your operation.
Period-by-Period Adjustment
Modify forecasts by percentage for any time period. Increase summer months, scale down holiday weeks, adjust for known contract timing.
Multiple Demand Record Types
Load forecasts as Master Schedule records, Sales Forecast records, or Independent Demand records, depending on how you drive MRP.
Part, Model, or Category Forecasting
Forecast at the level that makes sense: individual SKUs, product models, or entire categories. Roll up or break down as needed.
The Real Cost
What happens when planning runs in spreadsheets
Most manufacturers aren’t planning at all. They’re reacting with increasingly heroic effort from operations teams who manually juggle schedules, materials, and capacity across disconnected systems. The cost isn’t just overtime or expedited freight. It’s the margin erosion that happens when every job becomes a negotiation between what the customer ordered and what you can actually deliver.
One scheduling error cascades. A missed material delivery pushes Job A back, which delays Job B, which forces Job C into overtime, which blows the margin you promised on all three. When your capacity plan lives in someone’s head or a static Excel file from Tuesday morning, there’s no way to see the collision before it happens.
Chronic Overtime
Catching up on missed schedules costs 8-15% more in direct labor without adding margin.
Stockouts & Rush Orders
Emergency purchasing to cover planning failures eats working capital and increases unit cost.
Eroding Trust
Customers who can’t rely on your delivery dates start looking for suppliers who can.
How it works
See Rover in action
Integrations
Connect with your existing stack
Rover connects with the tools you already use. From accounting platforms to shipping carriers, our integrations eliminate manual data entry and keep your operations synchronized in real time.
CUSTOMER SUCCESS
How our customers regain control with Rover
Legacy Migration / Operational Continuity
From 40% data risk to operational triumph
Toolrite Manufacturing secured high-risk legacy data and eliminated manual entry bottlenecks by migrating to Rover ERP, transforming disorganized systems into real-time operational insights.
ERP Integration / Manufacturing Scalability
Outgrowing Sage 50: A "remarkable" operational shift
Carr Manufacturing eliminated the “double entry” bottleneck and software bugs of Sage 50 by transitioning to Rover ERP, replacing a limited plugin with a fully integrated, customizable ERP and accounting solution.
Legacy Migration / Business Continuity
Modernizing 25 years of custom legacy data
US Wheel successfully migrated a quarter-century of complex custom data to Rover ERP, replacing a vulnerable, programmer-dependent application with a scalable Windows-based interface and advanced ERP features.
FAQS
Your questions answered
Do I need all four planning modules, or can I start with just MRP?
Start where the pain is worst. Most manufacturers begin with Material Requirements Planning (MRP) to get material shortages under control, then add Master Production Schedule (MPS) as they grow and need to plan production before orders arrive. Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) and Forecasting layer in when capacity becomes the constraint or when you need longer planning horizons. All four modules share the same data, so adding capabilities later doesn’t require re-implementation.
How long does it take to get Planning & Forecasting operational?
Most planning modules are fully operational within the first 90 days of the broader ERP rollout. The timeline depends on BOM complexity and how much historical data you want to migrate, but our implementation team handles data mapping, initial setup, and training. You don’t need dedicated IT staff or operations research expertise to get live.
Does Rover Planning work if we currently use spreadsheets for scheduling?
Yes. That’s exactly the problem Rover Planning solves. The system replaces manual Excel-based planning with real-time MRP, MPS, and CRP that pull live data from sales orders, inventory, and work centers. You’ll still have visibility and control, but without the version conflicts, stale data, and manual reconciliation that make spreadsheet planning break down as you grow.
Can we customize planning policies by part or product family?
Absolutely. Rover MRP lets you define order policies at the part level (min/max, reorder point, lot-for-lot, fixed order quantity, etc.). MPS supports planning bills so you can forecast product families by percentage and break down to specific SKUs. The system adapts to your planning philosophy rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all approach.
How does Rover Planning handle make-to-order versus make-to-stock operations?
It handles both in the same system. For make-to-order, MRP drives material requirements directly from sales orders. For make-to-stock, MPS builds production schedules based on forecasts and consumes them as actual orders arrive. You can run hybrid strategies (make-to-stock for high-volume items, make-to-order for custom configurations) without switching systems or workarounds.
What happens when actual demand differs from the forecast?
MPS automatically consumes forecasts as real sales orders arrive. If actual demand exceeds forecast, the system flags the variance and you can adjust future periods. If demand falls short, you see the excess planned production before you overbuild. The goal isn’t perfect forecasting—it’s visibility into the gap between plan and reality so you can adjust proactively instead of reactively.
See Rover in action
A 30-minute demo, tailored to your industry and pain points. No slides, no pitch deck. Just your questions and real answers from people who know manufacturing.
