You can download the Master Production Schedule template here:

A Master Production Schedule (MPS) is a plan for individual products to be manufactured in each individual time period.

It is a critical tool in the production planning process for a company that makes standard products via a Make-to-Stock production mode.

How is a Master Production Schedule used in production planning?

Production planning is a circular process involving:

1. General planning, which produces an MPS. I.e. When and what SHOULD be produced

2. Detailed scheduling, which subsequently delivers a production schedule. I.e. When, where, how, and from whom CAN the products be produced?

3. Return to step 1, and repeat until satisfied.

What is a Master Production Schedule?

The goal of the Master Production Schedule (MPS) is to balance supply and demand by period, where your production is the ‘supply’, and the forecast or confirmed sales is the ‘demand’.

The plan indicates by period, by the extent to which the product will be demanded in terms of quantity, what the starting and ending inventory positions are, and the planned quantities to be produced.

What is Production Scheduling?

Crucially, the MPS itself does not address the individual tasks of production, such as, operations and sequences, workstation capacities, workers, materials availability and lead times, etc.

These are the focus of production scheduling (i.e. planning out a realistic schedule for each worker and machine).

Performing this in Excel is not easy, if not impossible at all. For production scheduling, we recommend using MRPeasy.