Yes !

In our experience, you must do planning without BOM! Namely at the beginning, when the order has been confirmed.
Weeks earlier within the proposal you have announced what you will be able to do. Both Both in terms of your assessment (calculation) of the expense, as well what the processing time will be. Now immediately must be checked, how this additional contract fits together with the other current orders. Now you need a first estimate where your previous plan needs to be adjusted.

Since the construction is not yet available, you have to start without BOM, without item based planning. Whether you later add planning on BOM item level in PlanTool  is your decision. The detail level of planning can be different from order to order. Even only partially detail planning is possible.
Keep in mind, you always collect actual data on BOM level!

Yes !
Planning on the Items of BOM as a wide range of vanities. Read how different our customers do this:

• only special parts with unusual steps get a working plan
• only bigger orders are planned on BOM level
• only spare parts get working plans to achieve separate scheduling for them
• all get working plan - except very small orders
• also what is inside of a working plan differs:
• without calculated hours (just a station plan)
• with calculated hours
• with setting of dependencies for automatic date calculation

In PlanTool you can find your way - every situation is integrated and you do not need to wait for special customize. We like to support your way of business. Decide on your processes and what is the best for your employees.

Priorities are one help to handle situations with overload. Keep in mind: If 3 orders could start in milling, each needs 100 hours a week; and 350 hours a week are available. Then you don't need priority as all fit into the resources. But if capacity available is 250 hours, the priority works and selects the not so important order partially on hold. If still all 3 orders fulfill the delivery date no further action is necessary. And if not? There is a wide range of action you can do (as simulation before you release it):

• overtime (daily, on weekend)
• help of supplier on selected packages
• shift between similar groups (small part on big machine)
• slow down orders which block you (if the date still is to keep)
• force start in special groups to a fixed date
• If now the simulation fulfills the requirements, activate this plan and set it as the new target for all departments.

Yes !
Originally PlanTool has been released as a planning system 14 years ago. Since then in several steps we added all this functions to support the administrative parts of your business:

• Calculate and sending offers
• order confirmation
• delivery notes
• supply chain (inquiry, purchase order)
• receiving goods documentation
• checking invoices
• writing invoices
• stock
• business reports like “work in process”

And off course there are interfaces to accounting systems like DATEV, Diamand, Schilling...

Several of our customers use PlanTool as the planning and controlling system for the department tool shop. Die bekannten großen ERP-Systeme wie SAP, Navision, Infor usw. sind für die Organisation der Serienfertigung mit einer weit verteilten Aufgabensplittung optimiert.
Im Werkzeugbau ist der “Planer” oft gleichzeitig der “Steuerer” also für die Serie verteilte Aufgaben sind in wenigen Personen konzentriert. In den großen artikelbasiert arbeitenden Systemen muss z.B. oft erst eine Struktur geschaffen werden, wenn “mal eben” 4 Stücklistenpositionen in einem Arbeitsplan zusammengefasst werden sollen.
Es erfolgt die Rückführung von Daten aus PlanTool als Subsystem an das übergeordnete System. Je nach Betrieb sind dies typischerweise Termine und Ist-Stunden und weitere Informationen. Dazu stehen moderne Schnittstellen (Web-Service, RFC-Bausteine) aber auch altbekannte wie Textdateien, Transferdatenbank usw. zur Verfügung.

Finally to present a Gantt Chart or other reports is the smallest thing. Important is to answer the question how much maintenance you will need to keep them actual. Many tool shops tried a standard PPS system and found for them it is not possible to keep all accurate.

We think you did not get success by just showing the past and actual situation. By PlanTool you regulate the future to best solution for your tool shop. Look on this points:
How to identify what a new urgent order does to the running orders? Keep in mind PlanTool analyses workload over all orders simultaneously - others often just show the new order stand alone
If you decide to place urgent order between existing orders, schedules have to be renewed. PlanTool does this automatically for each step of each working plan.
What about small in between orders? Is it possible to collect the hours related to BOM Positions without writing a plan for each position. In PlanTool of course.

In PlanTool overall planning is the most important function to control and organize all in tasks the company. Orders are monitored in a compressed way. So maintenance of the figures is on a low level of workload.
To manage parallelism of running orders is one of the tasks. Imagine the capacity as a cake. The pieces represent the capacity assigned to the different orders. But the pieces are just marked, not all are cut of at once..
The situation in tool shop orders is always changing. New orders, stop of orders, modifications, design change are frequently done. You stay able to manage the changes, because of compressed working with the orders instead of working with many details.
Based on your settings on each activation the next portion of pieces is cut. But the future is just a plan, waiting for new changes.

By machine control desk easily define follow up of tasks on machines..
If you did working plans, drag and drop them to the best fitting machine, place them between existing jobs. Immediately see fulfillment of requirements.
In PlanTool machine control desk even tasks without working plan can be assigned to a machine. Just drag a bar and select the order (and position of BOM). I even no BOM exists: no problem just type some words in to clarify what is ment. .This makes it so easy specially for rush oders and spare parts
Of course all jobs are automatically rearranged, when a task is booked as finished or interrupted. Special carre is taken for type of the job and machine. Jobs may be limited not to run without person - or only without person. Machine may be set up to have a workpiece changer  - new jobs starts even in the night.

Planning of employees normally is done different to machines. It is common to have overlapping work forr an employee. E.g. the designer has the task to design a new tool, but also is responsible for helping production for previous design. But this is not scheduled in detail, as the point of time is not so important. The small work is done sometime in between the bigger job.
Like in machine control desk tasks can be inserted without the need of a working plan - most common method for designers. In CAM often the working plan tasks are assigned to a person - often by grouping.

This module supports also to handle the absence of employees - with automatically reducing of capacity in the groups the person is assigned to.
As this can be edit, also help from a different workgroup can be used to correct the effect to capacity.

PlanTool supports growing BOM. This means to import the BOM several times and/or to edit the BOM with release marks in PlanTool.
On several import, PlanTool automatically detects the known items. And PlanTool compares if changes have been made in the entries of the important fields.

Creating working plans in PlanTool is mostly done by copying. Using templates, working plans existing in similar tools, using plans assigned to articles are the methods.
If copying BOM items, you typically copy also the working plan.

Scheduling the BOM items requires to tell PlanTool the dependencies. e.g. which electrodes have to be finished, before erosion is able to start. But also simple things like which shall be the first and which the last item in manufacturing need to be documented. This is done while selecting the working plan from the templates. Later this can be modified in the graphical view.