Planning scenarios
I meant these as a set of use cases, but the master branch is closed and I don't want to create a pull request yet, so will post them here for now.
Planning scenarios
Types of planning
Demand-driven
Demand-driven planning starts with the final outputs or deliverables that the plan is supposed to create, and schedules backwards in time from the required end dates.
Most products that are assembled from components use demand-driven planning.
Supply-driven
Supply-driven planning starts with the source materials and plans what to do with them, scheduling forward in time from the start date. Somewhere in the flow, supply meets demand and the supply flows at that stage need to be separated to meet the various demands.
Agricultural crops are the prototypical example of supply-driven planning: the crop is ripe in the field and will rot unless harvested.
Another supply-driven example is a paper mill.
Recipes
Most types of planning use something like a recipe or work breakdown structure to guide the planning algorithm.
I'll add more detail for each of these scenarios in comments below.