science

Production planning

Production planning is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Production planning rather than just read about it. In short: Production planning is the planning of production and manufacturing modules in a company or industry. It utilizes the resource allocation of activities of employees, materials and production capacity, in order to serve different customers.

Key takeaways

Production planning belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Production planning to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Production planning from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Production planning is the planning of production and manufacturing modules in a company or industry. It utilizes the resource allocation of activities of employees, materials and production capacity, in order to serve different customers. Different types of production methods, such as single item manufacturing, batch production, mass production, continuous production etc. have their own type of production planning. Production planning can be combined with production control into production planning and control, or it can be combined with enterprise resource planning.

Overview Production planning is the future of production. It can help in efficient manufacturing or setting up of a production site by facilitating required needs. A production plan is made periodically for a specific time period, called the planning horizon. It can comprise the following activities:

Determination of the required product mix and factory load to satisfy customers needs. Matching the required level of production to the existing resources. Scheduling and choosing the actual work to be started in the manufacturing facility" Setting up and delivering production orders to production facilities. In order to develop production plans, the production planner or production planning department needs to work closely together with the marketing department and sales department. They can provide sales forecasts, or a listing of customer orders." The "work is usually selected from a variety of product types which may require different resources and serve different customers. Therefore, the selection must optimize customer-independent performance measures such as cycle time and customer-dependent performance measures such as on-time delivery." A critical factor in production planning is "the accurate estimation of the productive capacity of available resources, yet this is one of the most difficult tasks to perform well". Production planning should always take "into account material availability, resource availability and knowledge of future demand".

History

Modern production planning methods and tools have been developed since late 19th century. Under Scientific Management, the work for each man or each machine is mapped out in advance (see image). The origin of production planning back goes another century. Kaplan (1986) summarized that "the demand for information for internal planning and control apparently arose in the first half of the 19th century when firms, such as textile mills and railroads, had to devise internal administrative procedures to coordinate the multiple processes involved in the performance of the basic activity (the conversion of raw materials into finished goods by textile mills, the transportation of passengers and freight by the railroads." Herrmann (1996) further describes the circumstances in which new methods for internal planning and control evolved: "The first factories were quite simple and relatively small. They produced a small number of products in large batches. Productivity gains came from using interchangeable parts to eliminate time-consuming fitting operations. Through the late 1800s, manufacturing firms were concerned with maximizing the productivity of the expensive equipment in the factory. Keeping utilization high was an important objective. Foremen ruled their shops, coordinating all of the activities needed for the limited number of products for which they were responsible. They hired operators, purchased materials, managed production, and delivered the product. They were experts with superior technical skills, and they (not a separate staff of clerks) planned production. Even as factories grew, they were just bigger, not more complex. About production planning Herrmann (1996) recounts that "production scheduling started simply also. Schedules, when used at all, listed only when work on an order should begin or when the order is due. They didn't provide any information about how long the total order should take or about the time required for individual operations ..." In 1923 Industrial Management cited a Mr. Owens who had observed: "Production planning is rapidly becoming one of the most vital necessities of management. It is true that every establishment, no matter how large or how small has production planning in some form; but a large percentage of these do not have planning that makes for an even flow of material, and a minimum amount of money tied up in inventories."

Topics

Types of planning Different types of production planning can be applied:

Advanced planning and scheduling Capacity planning Master production schedule Material requirements planning MRP II (Manufacturing Resources Planning) Scheduling Workflow Related kind of planning in organizations

Employee scheduling Enterprise resource planning Inventory control Product planning Project planning Process planning, redirects to Computer-aided process planning Sales and operations planning Strategy

Production control Production control is the activity of controlling the workflow in the production. It is partly complementary to production planning.

See also Industrial engineering Manufacturing process management Materials management Operations management Production engineering

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Production planning

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Production planning claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Production planning before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Production planning ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Production planning

In research: Production planning appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Production planning in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Production planning is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Planning, Production planning, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Production planning outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Production planning in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Production planning means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Production planning out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Production planning in simple terms?

Why does Production planning matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Production planning?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Production planning.