---
description: Schedule your factory builds/campaigns with ion plans
---

# Plans and Autoplan

{% hint style="info" %}
Please note that Autoplan is available as a **paid add-on**. Contact your customer success manager to learn more about pricing and how to enable Autoplan for your account.&#x20;

An onboarding session is required to enable Autoplan. See [preparing-to-use-autoplan](plans-and-autoplan/preparing-to-use-autoplan "mention") for more details.
{% endhint %}

## What is a plan?

A plan is a grouping of milestones/schedules (plan inputs) for parts and tasks (plan items) required to fulfill those milestones. Plans enable you to track progress against a factory schedule.

### Creating a new plan

Plans are initialized by creating at least a single **plan input** as shown below. Below that is the results section, where **plan items** can be added to the plan.

{% embed url="https://www.loom.com/share/bba2f74891a8486abe269b2381efd882" %}

### Plan items

Plan items can be added manually or automatically by using IONs MRP engine. To have plan items added automatically, move the plan to "In progress", click on "View MRP jobs" and click "Run MRP". It will take a few minutes for the job to run, but you can track the status in real time. Read about MRP in the next section to learn more!

You can manually create a plan item as well, as shown below.

A plan item represents a need for a part with optional start and completion dates. This need is fulfilled by linking a result, in the form of the inventory, runs, or purchase orders.

{% embed url="https://www.loom.com/share/19c27b77a4eb4ac6b813defcbe6a9082" %}
Manually creating a plan item
{% endembed %}

Plan items across all plans can viewed from the **Plan results** page by clicking the "See all plan items" button:

{% embed url="https://www.loom.com/share/ce2d4d2af10c4ad28defb1fcb63cdb4d" %}
Plan Results
{% endembed %}

Plan items can be viewed here in flat or hierarchical format. **Hierarchical** will require clicking on parent plan items to display nested parts, while **Flat** will show all plan items.

### Ready vs Not ready

Plan items for assemblies that have children will include a "Ready" or "Not ready" flag. "Ready" means that all child components are in inventory. This can be a helpful indicator when deciding whether to create a new run.

<figure><img src="https://3615148728-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-LkRqYp6lJhwxjYdzYG8%2Fuploads%2FcjXobAn5fRq2eMjWhLpt%2Fimage.png?alt=media&#x26;token=41d7b743-f717-45a3-828f-3f2d2a719c74" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
