PRODUCTION PLANNING AND CONTROL

The key man in the organisation is the customer with whom all work begins and ends. The basic problem is to supply a product for a customer or for stock, to a desired standard, at the most economic price, and at the time required. Orders are received by the sales department, and then involve design, purchasing of raw materials and semi-finished parts, manufacture and despatch to the customer.

The Sales Department:

1. Find out what the customer wants and then compares this with what the firm can provide.

2. It decides, in conjunction with the design department, whether any modifications to standard designs are required to meet the customer's particular demands or standard catalogue items be passed directly to the drawing office.

In this Department, the computer can examine past orders which may be grouped under such factors as salesmen, areas, value or profitability. It can keep track of the strength of the competition in various areas and analyse, where the orders have been lost.

On the basis of this, it can forecast the future demand and can thus advise management and the design department as to what types of products are particularly required.

The Design Department:

1. The function of the Design Department is to design new equipment and to make modifications to established items either to bring them up-to-date or to make them meet a specific requirement of the customer.

2. The drawings will also contain parts lists or bills of materials which can be used for the stores and purchasing functions.

The design department holds drawings for standard items and also designs of parts which have been designed or modified to meet specific customer requirements.

A parts list which will give details of the raw materials, bought out finished items and tools which are required to make the finished product are normally associated with each drawing. The computer helps in storing these parts list on a magnetic tape or floppy disks which can be assessed when required.

All the standard engineering calculations, which were produced on a slide rule or desk calculating machine can now be done more quickly and in more detail by the computer. Also, mathematical work relating to the stress and strain which is subjected to the parts is also performed by the computer within no time.

The latest light pen devices have enabled the computer to draw the free-hand pictures on the face of a cathode ray tube.

The Purchasing Department:

The job of the purchasing Department is to buy the materials at the best possible prices and on the most reliable delivery to replenish the materials help in the stores on maximum and minimum levels.

The computer helps in analysing and recording the prices being charged for both raw materials and semi-finished goods. It can also compare the performance of various suppliers oil quality, delivery and price and call also assess stock control. A computer can be used to assess the most economic maximum and minimum quantities of materials to hold, bearing in mind the capital cost of storing, the amount of money tied up and the heat, light and space in buildings involved. In conjunction, with the cost control data, it is possible to calculate the theoretical maximum and minimum batch sizes.

Manufacturing Department:

Checks that the parts produced are as economical as possible for delivery at the time required by the customer and to the standard set by the design department.

In the manufacturing process, the computer can estimate the deliveries likely to be given to a customer. On a more detailed basis, it can load the shops for several weeks ahead so as to minimise either the work in progress or the job end times or with reference to some other criteria which the management has decided. Once data are being handled in this manner they can be used to form the basis of analysis in assessing such factors as the efficiency of the shop floors and their performance against estimates.

The Despatch Department:

The duty of the dispatch department is to break down the items into packages of reasonable size by volume or by weight for handling by lorry, ship or aircraft.

The Despatch Department is concerned with sending goods by land, sea and air. To do this, it must know the size of crates and weights and the methods of calculating freight charges. This information can be stored in a computer for each of the various products made and can thus determine tile most economic size of crating to suit any particular form of transport.

Advantages of Computerised Production Control:

1. Reduction of work in progress and buffer stocks.
2. Progressive tightening up of management encouraged by providing targets.
3. Management Statistics provided.
4. A challenge to management.
5. Long term effects of management decisions shown.
6. Over and under folds on facilities shown.

7. Foremen enabled to plan ahead.
8. Progress chaser shown what and where to chase.
9. More accurate information updated as and when required.
10. Reduced paper work in use at any one time.
11. Better communication made possible.


The main benefit from any computerised production control package is that data will be handled quickly, efficiently and accurately which would be impossible otherwise without a large number of clerks.

Information about every item in a company can be handled through a program as often required. If the output obtained from this information is sorted out in the form suitable for the recipient then it enables the foremen, planners and progress chasers to think ahead on the same information being presented to each person. It enables them to work towards an agreed policy without bothering about the next job to be done.


The output information from the program will always show the exact delivery date of the finished products. It can also show -

1. The minimum possible delivery date assuming there is no other work in the shop.
2. The best possible delivery date attainable when all other constraints are taken into account.
3. The changes in the delivery date which have taken place since the first job started.

This kind of information acts as an efficiency measure for management, as the manager has at his fingertips, the detailed loading on his resources and can decide accordingly whether he should purchase additional machines to reduce bottlenecks or should subcontract work on a short term basis.
Once job data are stored in the computer, it is easy to process them in such a way as to give an indication of the efficiency of the various sections of the workshop.