Production planning & control is a complex process. It involves many tasks to complete and requires monitoring them very carefully. And running a business without any planning may end up manufacturing wrong or defective items, ultimately affecting your business reputation and finance.
We are here today to talk about how to run planning and control in manufacturing.
Understanding production planning and control in manufacturing: Step-by-step procedure
Production planning and control consist of two entities.
- Production planning and,
- Production control
The following sections will discuss the steps of how these two actions are driven.
Step 1: Planning
Each task needs proper planning, and it indicates the objectives. In manufacturing, planning determines everything about the production process that will shortly initiate. Then controlling comes to ensure the planning is appropriately followed.
The basic requirement for planning anything will always be the information of the relevant fields. For example, sales data, along with the number of orders and delivery dates, give the idea of what time limit they have before reaching the customer’s demands.
Step 2: Routing
Routing is the technical framework of production that defines how raw materials will turn into the final goods. It also gives the idea of required resources and their quality. So, the place of production and operations for them are easily understandable.
Notably, routing response to the questions of ‘What,’ ‘Where,’ ‘How much,’ and ‘How’ in production. It organizes the whole process and pursues the best result.
Step 3: Scheduling
Scheduling refers to the endpoint of a specific function as it completes. Inspecting or overlooking the scheduling makes it clear how efficiently the work is done.
Not every organization has the same type of schedule. There are different schedules like Operation Schedule, Master Schedule, Daily Schedule, etc.
Step 4: Loading
Loading means the distribution of work among the workers and machines. If the workers or machines are available to carry out other crucial activities after loading, that is called underload.
In that case, more orders can be added. On the other hand, the management should reduce the workload when the capacity is overloaded.
To cover both scenarios, requesting overtime, using a sub-contractor, adding shifts, etc., are possible actions to keep the process productive and balanced.
Step 5: Dispatching
This step follows directions of routing and scheduling and ensures that each employee is instructed and ordered about their tasks. There can be several parts to dispatching that are mentioned below.
- Issuing important materials or fixtures for the production
- Drawing or issuing orders for the beginning of the work
- Maintaining records from the beginning till the end
- Starting the control procedure
- Descending works in the different processes properly
Step 6: Follow-up
Follow-up is for detecting defects or faults and locating loopholes and bottlenecks in the process. This step helps to diagnose the gap between expected performance and actual performance.
Objectives of planning and controlling in production
Let’s have a basic idea about the objectives expected to be achieved by production planning and controlling.
Production planning aims to –
- Secure both quantity and quality of the equipment, raw materials, etc., available for production.
- Ensure the utilization of capacity has a fine-tuning with the demand anticipated.
On the other hand, production control pursues –
- Regulating inventory management
- Organizing production schedules
- Highest utilization of the production process and resources
In short, we can say that these two processes work successively and simultaneously to improve productivity and customer satisfaction.
Now companies and organizations are using ERP software to easily monitor and control the process.
Benefits of production planning and controlling
Through well-managed production planning and controlling, one can expect the benefits below.
- An organization can maintain good time management.
- The production process runs smoothly
- Inventory costs can be minimized
- Less wastage of resources
- Efficiency is increased
- Standard quality is maintained
- It saves time and the workforce
Last Words
That was all about production planning and control in manufacturing, in short. We hope it might give you the basic idea of why an organization should be sincere and careful about planning and controlling when it comes to manufacturing.
The primary objective of a business is to provide service. So, there shouldn’t be any compromise in preparing that service or product. Thus, study more to know more and apply the best from it.
