I’d like to start a discussion about the practical differences between using Odoo’s standard Production Scheduling UI versus the MRP Gantt views for managing complex manufacturing operations. Our facility runs multi-stage production with significant dependencies between work centers, and we’re evaluating which interface provides better visibility and control.
We’ve been using the traditional production scheduling interface for the past year, but we’re considering switching to Gantt views for better visual representation of our manufacturing timeline. Our operations involve 8 work centers with varying capacity constraints and frequent schedule changes due to material delays or priority shifts.
The standard UI works well for individual work order management, but it becomes challenging to visualize the overall production flow and identify bottlenecks across multiple work centers simultaneously. The Gantt view seems promising for this, but I’m concerned about the learning curve for our production supervisors and whether it actually improves scheduling efficiency in practice.
For those who have experience with both approaches in Odoo 15, what are the real-world trade-offs? Does the Gantt view actually help with capacity planning and bottleneck identification, or does it just look better without providing substantial operational benefits? I’m particularly interested in hearing from facilities with similar complexity levels.
The choice really depends on your team’s workflow and the complexity of your scheduling needs. Standard UI is better for detailed work order management and quick status updates. Gantt excels at high-level planning and dependency visualization. In most implementations I’ve done, the best approach is hybrid - use Gantt for weekly planning sessions with management and standard UI for daily shop floor operations. The Gantt view in Odoo 15 has significantly improved drag-and-drop functionality compared to earlier versions, which makes rescheduling much faster. However, it can become cluttered if you have more than 50-60 concurrent work orders, so filtering becomes essential.
Thank you all for the detailed insights. Based on the discussion, it seems the optimal approach for our situation is indeed a hybrid model. After reviewing the feedback and conducting some internal testing, here’s what we’re implementing: We’ll use Gantt views for weekly production planning meetings where we need to visualize the entire production timeline, identify capacity constraints, and make strategic scheduling decisions. The visual representation will help our planning team and management quickly understand bottlenecks and resource utilization patterns across our 8 work centers. For daily shop floor operations, we’re sticking with the standard production scheduling UI. Our supervisors need quick access to work order details, material availability, and quality checkpoints - functions that are more efficiently accessed through the traditional interface, especially on mobile devices. We’re also addressing the data quality concerns raised by implementing a two-week data validation project before full Gantt adoption. This includes verifying work center capacity definitions, reviewing standard operation times, and ensuring all work order dependencies are correctly configured. The key insight from this discussion is that Gantt isn’t a replacement for the standard UI - it’s a complementary tool that serves different purposes in the production management workflow. The visual timeline excels at strategic planning and exception management, while the standard interface remains superior for tactical execution and detailed work order management. For facilities considering this transition, I’d recommend starting with Gantt for planning sessions only, training your team thoroughly on filtering and time range management to avoid performance issues, and maintaining both interfaces accessible based on user role and task requirements.
Technical consideration: Gantt views can have performance issues with large datasets. If you’re rendering hundreds of work orders across multiple work centers for extended time periods, the interface can become sluggish. We had to implement custom filtering and limit the default time range to maintain acceptable load times.
We made the switch to Gantt views about six months ago and haven’t looked back. The visual timeline representation makes it incredibly easy to spot scheduling conflicts and capacity overloads. Our supervisors initially resisted the change, but after two weeks of use, they found it much more intuitive than the list-based scheduling interface.
One major advantage of Gantt that often gets overlooked is the ability to see work center utilization at a glance. With the standard UI, you’re essentially managing work orders in isolation without clear visibility into whether you’re overloading specific resources. The color coding in Gantt views immediately highlights capacity issues. That said, the Gantt view requires more screen real estate and isn’t ideal for mobile devices, which can be a limitation if your supervisors work primarily from tablets on the shop floor.
From a lean manufacturing perspective, Gantt views align better with visual management principles. They make waste visible - you can immediately see idle time, queue buildup, and unbalanced workloads. However, the effectiveness depends heavily on data quality. If your work order time estimates are inaccurate or your work center capacity data isn’t current, the Gantt view will give you false confidence. Make sure your master data is solid before relying on Gantt for critical scheduling decisions. I’ve seen facilities where the Gantt view looked beautiful but was completely disconnected from shop floor reality because the underlying data was garbage.