Essay, Research Paper: Production Control

Production control

One type of production control would not be sufficient for
all manufacturing situations. The control system needed for an
automobile assembly, for example, is entirely different than the
one needed for a plant producing one-of-a-kind punch presses.
The type of control system depends upon the type of production.

The president of a manufacturing concern is responsible for the production
control, but production control is actually the
responsibility of whoever is directly charged with the
production; the works manager, the plant manager, or the
manufacturing vice president. Except in a very small
organization, this person has many problems and so delegates his
responsibility of the coordination of the production facilities
to produce a product on schedule at an optimum cost. These
responsibilites are gathered under one function: under the
Production controller.

Responsibilities for control consist of three stages: the
planning, action and compiance states; and each production
activity is subject to these three stages of control. When an
activity does not comply with the plan the planning and action
stages must be repeated; so the stages continually cycle until
the activity is completed.

The planning stage; rotating. Rotating determines where the
work is to be done. Scheduling: Scheduling determines when the
work is to be done. It sets the timing of production control,

and is not unlike the establishment for theaters and other
similar activities.

The action stage-dispatching: Dispatching is the function of
issuing the orders at the correct time, a function similar to the
dispatching of trains in the rail road industry. In flow
control, dispatching consists of notifying the production
facilites of the quantity needed, while in order control it
becomes a complex procedure of issuing numerous production orders
to direct and indirect workers.

The compliance stage: Expediting--this is the function of
determining whether or not the work is progressing as planned.
The expenditor serves as the feedback link between the performance
of work and the scheduling and routing functions of production
control. The work of today's expeditor has been reduced because
it has been replaced by formal progress reports which are
collected and processed by automatic data processing.

The objective of production contol is to coordinate
production facilities, and numerous communication enterfaces
occur with the other departments. They all have a common
interest in making a product on schedule at an optimum cost, but
the method of doing it is at times a source of disagreement.



References:

Greene, James. Production Contol: Systems and Design.
Homewood, IL: Homewood Press, 1987

Halpin, Daniel & Woodhead, Ronald Construction Management
1991