Becoming a brewery production planner

What a production planner actually does

A production planner turns demand into a schedule the brewery can actually run. Sales and marketing say how much of each beer and pack they expect to sell. The planner works out which brews to schedule, when each one needs a fermenter, when it packages and what raw materials and packaging must arrive in time.

Then reality intervenes. A fermentation runs slow, a canning line breaks down, a customer doubles an order. The planner reshuffles the schedule, often several times a week. Then they tell everyone what changed.

Beer has awkward lead times

Planning beer is harder than planning many packaged goods because the product takes weeks to make and ties up expensive tanks. A typical ale might spend two weeks from brew to packaging. A lager can take four weeks or more with lagering. That means the planner is committing tanks for beer that will not sell for a month.

A simple way to see the problem is in tank days. Ten fermenters give about 300 tank days a month. If lagers take 28 days and ales 14, every lager costs two ale slots. Shift the mix towards lager in summer and the brewery's output in litres drops unless something else changes. Our guide to beer production planning basics walks through that maths.

The tools of the job

At a craft brewery the plan often lives on a whiteboard and a spreadsheet. At larger breweries it lives in an ERP system such as SAP, with modules for material requirements, scheduling and inventory. Planners need to be fluent in spreadsheets, comfortable with an ERP and able to build a simple model of capacity.

Many large companies run a monthly sales and operations planning meeting, where sales, production, finance and supply chain agree a single plan. The production planner usually brings the capacity view: what the brewery can make and what it would take to make more.

A physical tank scheduling board is still common even in automated plants, because people on the floor can see it at a glance.

Skills that matter

• Numeracy: converting hectolitres to cases, batches to tank days, forecasts to raw material orders.
• Process knowledge: knowing why a beer cannot simply be rushed and which steps have flexibility.
• Communication: telling the brewing team their weekend changed and getting sales to accept a delay.
• Calm judgement: choosing which order slips when not everything fits.

Planners also watch stock. Too little finished beer and outlets run dry. Too much and it ages in the warehouse, which hurts hop forward beers within weeks. In a hot country, warehouse temperature makes that window shorter still, so many planners track stock in days of cover as well as in cases.

The planners brewers trust are the ones who have stood in the cellar and understand what a stuck fermentation means. A plan that ignores yeast biology will be wrong by Wednesday.

Ways into the role

People come into production planning from two directions. Some start on the brewing or packaging floor and move into planning because they know the plant. Others come from supply chain, operations or industrial engineering backgrounds, often with a degree in engineering, commerce or supply chain management. They learn the brewing side on the job.

Planning experience in other process industries, such as dairy, soft drinks or food, transfers well. Interviewers will usually test how you would handle a capacity clash, so prepare an example of a time you had to choose between competing demands with limited resources.

Where it leads

A good week for a planner is a dull one: brews go in on time, tanks empty as planned and nobody runs out of a best seller. Most weeks are not like that. Expect pressure around festivals and the year end, when sales want more beer than the tanks can hold and every department believes its order should come first.

Planners progress to senior planner, planning manager and supply chain roles. Because they see the whole operation, from raw materials to dispatch, some move into operations management. Our guide to becoming a brewery operations manager covers that next step.

The planners who rise fastest understand the brewing process well enough to spot where the plan has slack and where it does not. That knowledge rarely comes with a supply chain degree.

Your first step

Take a brewery you know, or invent one with six fermenters. Plan four weeks of brews on a spreadsheet: two ales at 14 days and one lager at 28. You will hit your first tank clash within an hour. Solving it is the job in miniature.

Common questions

What does a brewery production planner do?

Turns sales forecasts into a schedule of brews, tank bookings, packaging runs and material orders, then adjusts it when things change.

What software do brewery planners use?

Spreadsheets at smaller breweries and ERP systems such as SAP at larger ones, often alongside a physical tank board.

Do I need a brewing degree to become a production planner?

No. Many come from supply chain or engineering backgrounds. Learning how beer is made makes the plans far more realistic.