The production process involves the planning and control of how goods will be manufactured. This usually includes the identification of raw materials required, the quantities of components needed to manufacture items, and the human workforce required to produce these products. These functions are the tasks carried out by the Production Planning and Control Department.
Production Planning Process
The production planning process within the production department involves the planning of what materials are required for the production of supplies and what is required to put these materials together. Issues to consider when conducting the production planning process include:
- Future Demand Planning – what is the trend of customers’ orders? Are there any upcoming events that might increase or decrease the number of orders?
- Lead Times – What are the time frames to manufacture an item? Are all the materials and tools required to manufacture an item available?
- Components Availability – are the components required to manufacture an item in stock? If the components are to be ordered this has to be taken into account and included in the time required to manufacture the item.
- Workforce Availability – this takes into consideration the skills and availability of the workforces.
The above considerations will be taken into account by the production team during the planning activity as a reference to organize the work involved according to the skills and machinery available.
By drawing up thorough production planning procedures that take into account all the materials and time required to manufacture a product, it is possible to calculate the production planning tools required and the cost of manufacturing.
Production Control Process
Production quality control involves the monitoring of the product manufacturing to ascertain that the products are produced according to the methodology specified and that the product performs to the planned functionality.
These functions are performed by the Quality Control team. Their role is to check products to ensure that they meet the company’s manufacturing standards. Quality control inspection will then proceed to identify any flaws in the established process.
The ultimate aim of production control is to minimize the number of product rejections and ensure that the process of production is optimized.
Importance of Production Planning and Control
To summarize the planning and control functions within a production department involve three main activities:
- Production work is initiated
- The work carried out is measured and monitored
- Any necessary alterations are made.
These three main activities are referred to as the classic feedback control loop. The feedback control loop may yield results that indicate a necessary change in raw materials, manufactured items and so on.
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Maureen Cutajar - Maureen is a professional IT project manager, web writer, and eBook formatter with educational background in English literature and ...
