FrePPLe is an easy-to-use and easy-to-implement open source framework for production planning.
The keywords from the above are clarified a bit further:
- Production Planning:
The term production planning refers to a number of planning processes used in manufacturing industries. The processes all deal with balancing demand and supply: using the available capacity, time and material as efficient as possible to meet the customer demand.
The subprocesses vary widely in their focus and usage: business area (such procurement, distribution, production, …), time horizon (short term/execution, mid term/tactical, or long term/strategic), etc…
FrePPLe is a solid framework for each of these processes, enabling the development of specialised applications to address your specific problem. The primary focus is on discrete manufacturing industry. - Easy-to-use and easy-to-implement:
Many companies are today planning in spreadsheets. Beyond a certain complexity and scale, such spreadsheets are no longer an adequate solution for the business challenges.
FrePPLe is designed as an easy next steps for such companies to move to a new capability level. - Open Source:
The open source model is a very pragmatic way of evolving software in a rapidly changing environment. You can read more details in this blog post on why we are convinced open source tools are the right answer for today’s challenges. - Framework:
A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. Different business processes, different industries and different technical infrastructure all require a different solution.
FrePPLe is designed to be modular, extensible and customizable. Customizing is possible at three levels: 1) scripting, 2) user interface and 3) core library.

The input data model the different aspects of your manufacturing environment.
FrePPLe will run some planning algorithms on the data to generate plans as output that answer the following questions:
- Demand plan: How has the demand been satisfied? What demand will be planned late or short?
- Capacity plan: How are the resources loaded?
- Manufacturing plan: What operations are planned in our plants?
- Purchasing plan: What and when do we need to order from our material suppliers?
- Inventory plan: How much inventory will be available?
- Problems: Highlights exception conditions in the plans, such as capacity overloads, late orders, material shortages, etc…
FrePPLe is an advanced planning and scheduling tool: see also this Wikipedia page.
FrePPLe is NOT…
- … an ERP system.
An ERP system (see href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>this Wikipedia page) tracks all activities in a company to keep an accurate representation of the current situation. This implies a strong focus on transactions and accounting.
FrePPLe doesn’t track actuals or record the day to day transactions. It only plans for the future, taking the current situation (as provided by the ERP or other systems) as an input. - … an MES system.
MES systems (see this Wikipedia page) are used to monitor and guide the activities on the factory floor in real time. FrePPLe generates plans that can be communicated to the operators on the shop floor, but it doesn’t handle the interaction of the operators to report jobs as started and completed. - … a generic solver for any mathematical problem.
The modeling and solving capabilities are geared specifically towards production planning issues. Using frePPLe outside of this domain is not advisable, if not impossible.