Production Planning

 Production planning involves the organisation of an overall manufacturing system to produce a product. Specifically, it consists of designing the output, determining equipment and capacity requirements, designing the physical layout and material handling system, determining the sequence of operations together with the proper methods of performance and time requirements, and specifying certain production quantity and quality levels.

The objective of production planning is to provide a physical system together with a set of operating guidelines to efficiently convert raw materials, human skills, and other inputs into finished products. The production planning system may be divided into two interrelated subsystems:

A. Production planning system, and

B. Process planning system.

The subsystems are closely interrelated. The indicated lines of information feedback illustrate the need to coordinate the systems. In considering available processes and technology in the process planning system it often becomes evident that it will be difficult or even impossible to produce according to original product specifications. This information is then passed back to the product planning function where adjustments are made in the product design. Within each subsystem, a wide variety of decisions must be made. These too are interrelated.