Gantt Charts for Joinery: See Your Entire Workshop at a Glance

You've probably seen Gantt charts in project management textbooks — those horizontal bar charts showing tasks over time. They were invented in 1910 for factory scheduling. Over a hundred years later, they're still the best way to visualise a production schedule. But most Gantt chart tools are built for software developers or construction managers, not for joiners.

Why Joiners Need a Different Kind of Gantt Chart

A joinery workshop doesn't work like a construction site. You might have ten projects running simultaneously, each at a different stage. Your Gantt chart needs to show all of them at once — with phases that mean something to you: timber, machining, assembly, spray, glazing, QC, packaging, installation.

It needs colour coding so you can spot all spraying work at a glance. It needs worker names on each phase so you know who's doing what. And it needs drag-and-drop because in joinery, plans change every day.

One Screen, Every Project

The power of a Gantt chart is seeing everything in one view. Monday morning, you open your screen and see the next four weeks laid out. Project 001's timber phase overlaps with Project 005's assembly. Your lead joiner is booked solid, but your second bench has a gap on Wednesday. The sprayer is double-booked next Friday — better fix that now rather than discovering it on the day.

Production and Office: Two Sides of the Same Coin

A joinery project isn't just workshop work. There's site measuring, design, ordering, client approvals — all office tasks that need to happen in sequence with production. A proper joinery Gantt chart shows both production and office phases, so you can see the full picture.

Filtering: Your Secret Weapon

The real trick with a Gantt chart isn't adding more data — it's filtering it. Click a worker's name and see only their schedule. Click a phase type and see all timber work across every project. Click a date range and see what's happening this week. Filtering turns a complex chart into exactly the answer you need, right now.