PQM – Calendar, Gantt and Production Planning

The PQM calendar helps production teams see task deadlines, planned work and upcoming production load. Advanced planning can be extended with Gantt-style views, department scheduling and production capacity analysis.

What is the calendar for?

The calendar gives a time-based view of production. It helps show which tasks are due today, what is planned for the next days and which jobs may create overload or deadline risk.

Reading the calendar

• Each task is displayed on the relevant day.
• Task color can represent status.
• Clicking a task should open details or editing.
• Monthly view is useful for overview.
• Weekly view is better for operational planning.

Planning best practices

1. Do not schedule everything for the same day if production cannot handle it.
2. Use realistic deadlines, not wishful deadlines.
3. Mark blocked tasks clearly.
4. Close completed tasks regularly.
5. Review the calendar every morning and afternoon.

Status colors

Status colors help identify task state quickly. For example, New can be gray, In Progress blue, Completed green, Complaint red and Cancelled dark gray. The exact colors are less important than consistency.

Gantt-style planning

A Gantt-style view is useful when a task has multiple stages or departments. Instead of seeing only the final deadline, the team can see when prepress, production, finishing, quality control and packing should happen.

Example stages

• File preparation,
• Production,
• Finishing,
• Quality control,
• Packing,
• Shipping.

Department-based planning

The greatest value appears when a task is not just a calendar item, but is connected to departments. This helps managers see whether cutting is overloaded, printing has available capacity or packing is becoming a bottleneck.

Delays

The calendar should help detect tasks that are overdue or close to deadline. A healthy process identifies risk before the deadline is missed, not after.

Daily routine

Morning review

• check tasks due today,
• check overdue tasks,
• check blocked tasks,
• check the most important department workload.

Afternoon review

• close completed tasks,
• update statuses,
• reschedule tasks that cannot be completed,
• notify customers if deadlines change.