Production plan / Production company / samples

[Martin Prachař]

Good evening,  I use Trello in our company for handling running / active production orders, but without any calendar or deadlines.  
I tried to activate premium with possibility to use Timeline but I´ve stucked in avoiding weekends.

Our example - we have 12 CNC machines and full production for 8-10weeks.   I want to be able to move projects (orders) in timeline forward and backward  and ofcourse among the machines.  

There is any possibility to avoid weekends?  Do I need any higher skills to program  this scripts?  

I am open to any ideas and guides how to improve my skills too.

Thank you. Martin

[S&S Moulds]

Hi Martin,

Great question. This is a common challenge when using Trello for production planning, especially with CNC machines and long scheduling timelines.

Trello Timeline view is useful, but it does not support excluding weekends directly. However, there are a few practical solutions.

First, you can manually adjust start and due dates to avoid weekends, although this becomes difficult with long production cycles.

Second, you can use Butler automation in Trello. It allows you to create rules such as moving due dates from weekends to Monday. This does not require programming skills.

Third, you can assign each CNC machine using labels or custom fields and move tasks between them in Timeline view. This helps manage multiple machines.

Fourth, you can use power-ups like Planyway which provide better timeline and workload management.

For manufacturing environments, structured planning and clear workflows can significantly improve machine utilization and efficiency.

Hope this helps.

[Mike - Dreamsuite Consulting]

Hi @Martin Prachař 

You can certainly build systems like you defined.  I have built some pretty awesome production tracking, supply chain management, job tracking and resource management systems in Trello.  I is something to do well you should have to have:

1. An absolute understand of your process
2. An understanding of how to best make Trello fit that process

My advice for designing it in Trello is to visualise, trelloize it (make the boards, lists cards you need, test it manually and finally automate it.

You can get some inspiration from the Trello Template Gallery 

I had a look and this flow may give you some inspiration...Fabrication Process 

Of course, to turn it into the automated machine that simplifies your production workflow, you will want advanced features and automations and if you are new to this area there are lots of resources, including this video to introduce automations (YouTube is your friend when self-learning) 
Making An Automation: Create Board Rules 

Even though Trello Automation engine is simple and intuitive, to really draw the power from it takes a lot of time and experience and thankfully there are experts who can help.  I would recommend that you look for experts who can help you analyse your needs and generate the best fit for you.  The 2 places to look are:

1. Trello Consultants Right Here in the Community
2. Atlassian Partner Directory