ONE OF MY PAPERS IN TEACHING PRODUCTION PLANNING

1. Production Planning
The work of a Production Planning Department generally falls into three sections, dealing with
three stages of the sequence of operations. They are:
i) Compiling and recording facts.
ii) Developing plans.
iii) Putting plans into operation and controlling results.
In the first stage and section, information is gathered together, recorded and filed in a way which
is suitable for use by planners, and so that reference to it is easy and rapid. The information is of
three kinds, relating to:
a) Customers' orders and requirements;
b) Stocks of materials and components;
c) Plant available, capacities, operations and times.
Unless the organization is of such a size that each kind of information is dealt with in a separate
section, it is advisable for all of it to be handled by one section under the supervision of a person
skill din the work. Its organization is mainly a problem of filing and entering-up figures or
records form vouchers, i.e., transferring information and striking balances. It can usually be
staffed with Juniors, female, or relatively unskilled labour, but must be carefully supervised and
checked by very reliable people. The absolute accuracy and therefore double checking required
in banks is not essential, but inaccuracies can be troublesome and costly.
The second stage and section comprises the vital part of planning. It is her that the effectiveness
or indifference of results is ensured. And where the ability to scheme, think ahead and take all
factors into account is so essential. It is a job mainly done on paper,juggling as it were with
figures and charts. Sales budgets must be broken down into or integrated with long-term
production plans, factory and departmental plans formulated, and weekly or daily or even hour-
by-hour loads prepared. In small factories a few simple charts or schedules suffice, but in very
large organizations a vast amount of detailed information, in the form of masses of figures, flows
into the section, and must be rapidly and regularly collated and reissue for action. Extreme
tidiness is essential, and if those concerned are not to be bogged down by a continuous stream of
insistent inquiries demanding attention, much of the work must so be organised as to be dealt
with in a routine manner by juniors.
The third stage consists of translating the plans into instructions and can be mainly of a clerical
nature. In practice, however, it is at this stage that a certain amount of decentralization is
advisable, and the hour-by-hour machine or operation loading and the actual issue of jobs to
operators is done either in or adjacent to the forman's office, or in a shop office. Progress work,
that is, checking performance against plans and reporting results (with recommendations for
corrective action and requests for urgent actions) to foremen or other supervisors, which is really
an aspect of control, is frequently carried out form the same of and even by the same persons.
The complexity of an organization structure for production planning depe4nds on the type of

2. industry or manufacture rather than its scale. In mass-production and continuous-process
manufacture, production planning consist of balancing the flow of materials (or components)
from outside or component manufacturing departments, with consumption by the factory or
assembly departments. Particularly is this so in the automobile or similar industries, where a
good deal of preliminary work on materials in subcontracted, no large stocks of materials are
kept (or could be for the immense consumption rate) and a small interruption to production
affects a large part of the factory and is very expensive. In those factories engaged on batch
production of partly standardized products there is the added complexity of setting-up (time and
cost), varying batch sizes, and the synchronization of finishing dates for parts and sub assemblies
when batches vary so much. It is predominantly a question of continual adjustment in order to
maintain balanced loads on departments and to correct for unforeseen delays. When the product
is designed to customers' requirements, the total process time is increased by the time required
for design or preparation for each order, and consequently the period over which planning must
extend is greater, making the problem more complex. Production planning is most complex
when the product is mainly to customers' requirements, but is designed to incorporate many
standard parts kept in stock. When the number of orders exceeds something like 50 per week, the
amount of information to be handled becomes large and the department correspondingly so.