PRODUCTION PLANNING AND CONTROL

INTRODUCTION

Production Planning is a managerial function which is mainly concerned with the following important issues:

What production facilities are required?

How these production facilities should be laid down in the space available for production? and

How they should be used to produce the desired products at the desired rate of production?

Production planning is concerned with two main aspects:

(i) routing or planning

work tasks

(ii) layout or spatial relationship between the resources. Production planning is dynamic in nature and always remains in fluid state as plans may have to be changed according to the changes in circumstances.

Production control is a mechanism to monitor the execution of the plans. It has several important functions:

Making sure that production operations are started at planned places and planned times.

Observing progress of the operations and recording it properly.

Analyzing the recorded data with the plans and measuring the deviations.

Taking immediate corrective actions to minimize the negative impact of deviations from
the plans.

Feeding back the recorded information to the planning section in order to improve future plans.

OBJECTIVES AND BENEFITS

Minimize costs / maximize profits

Maximize customer service

Minimize inventory investment

Minimize changes in production rates

Minimize changes in work-force levels

Maximize the utilization of plant and equipment

FUNCTIONS OF PRODUCTION CONTROL

Production function encompasses the activities of procurement, allocation and utilization of resources.

The main objective of production function is to produce the goods and services demanded by the customers in the most efficient and economical way.

Therefore efficient management of the production function is of utmost importance in order to achieve this objective.