Planning & control
Production planning with SAP Business One, without a spreadsheet on the side
Prioritise orders, see progress in real time and commit to delivery dates without walking the hall first.
In most mid-market plants the real production plan does not live in the ERP but in a spreadsheet, on a magnetic board or in the head of the production manager. That works surprisingly long and collapses exactly when that person is on holiday or a rush order upends everything.
Caesar brings planning and execution together. Orders come from SAP Business One, get prioritised in Caesar and are shown to the shop floor in workable sequence. Every confirmation flows back into the same view, so the plan shows what is actually happening rather than what was planned yesterday.
Why planning drifts in mid-market manufacturing
The plan lives beside the system
Spreadsheets and magnetic boards are fast, but nobody except the planner sees them. When that person is away, control stalls.
Confirmations arrive too late
If progress is only posted the next day, you plan against a stale state. Delays surface once they can no longer be recovered.
Dates are estimates
Without reliable progress, every commitment rests on experience. That works until the one time it does not.
Rush orders upend everything
Re-prioritising is expensive on paper: every sheet has to be reprinted and redistributed, and someone is still working the old sequence.
How Caesar connects planning and control
A plan the shop floor can see, and confirmations that update it immediately.
Prioritise orders
The sequence is set centrally and visible at every workstation immediately. Re-prioritising costs a click instead of a walk through the hall.
Progress in real time
Every confirmation from shop-floor capture updates the order status. The plan shows the actual state, not the intended one.
Order tracking across all operations
Where an order stands is visible without asking, for production management, sales and leadership.
Spot bottlenecks early
When an operation is stuck you see it in the shift it happens, not at the delivery date.
Built on SAP B1 data
Orders, bills of material and stock come from SAP Business One. Nothing is maintained twice.
Answers by voice
With Cleo you can ask for the status of an order without opening a form. Useful when a customer is waiting on the phone.
Planning and execution belong together
A production plan is only as good as the confirmations feeding it. If progress and times are captured days later, you permanently plan against a state that no longer exists. That is why Caesar does not separate the two: the software where the sequence is set is the software where the shop floor confirms.
The effect is unspectacular and effective. Delays become visible while they can still be recovered. And commitments rest on data rather than on a good feeling.
Native connection to SAP Business One
Caesar does not touch the SAP database. It works exclusively through the official SAP Service Layer, the REST and OData interface of SAP Business One. Manufacturing orders, bills of material, stock and postings stay there.
That removes the classic planning break where a planning tool builds its own data store that has to be reconciled with the ERP regularly. There is one source of truth, and it lives in SAP B1.
Sized for the plants that actually have this problem
Classic APS and planning systems are built for plants with a dedicated planning department. In a company with 30 to 300 employees the production manager plans on the side, between customer calls and machine trouble. A system that has to be configured first will not be used.
That is why Caesar is built in shift operation at Efinger-Instruments, our reference plant in Baden-Württemberg. What does not prove itself there day to day does not make it into the software.
FAQ
Can SAP Business One do production planning out of the box?
SAP Business One ships manufacturing orders, bills of material and material requirements planning. What is missing is fine control: the sequence at the workstations, progress in real time and the view the shop floor actually works with. That is the layer Caesar adds.
Does Caesar replace our spreadsheet planning?
That is the point. The difference is that the sequence no longer lives on one computer but is visible at every workstation and updates itself through the confirmations.
How quickly does the shop floor see changes?
Caesar is a web application, so the shop-floor view updates directly. When a rush order is pulled forward, the next workstation sees it without a new printout.
Do we need a dedicated APS system?
In most mid-market plants the problem is not mathematical optimisation but missing visibility. Once that is clear, most of the planning pain resolves. Whether anything beyond that is needed we will discuss honestly in the demo.
Can we start small?
Yes. Many plants start with order control and confirmations in one area and extend from there. That keeps the risk small and shows early whether it holds.
See planning on your own order book
30 minutes, live from the reference plant. Bring your current order sequence and we will show it in Caesar.
