Production Planning Process

As stated at the beginning of the chapter, the success of a manufacturing supply chain depends on its ability to accurately forecast customer demands and plan the production process to meet those demands in time. So far in this chapter, we discussed the forecasting principles and several qualitative and quantitative methods for demand forecasting. Based on the demand forecasts, aggregate production planning is done to plan the production. 

The general production planning process consists of the following  

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SAP R/3 Modules CO (Costing), FI (Finance), MM (Materials Management), PP-PI (Production Planning — Process Industries), QM (Quality Management), and SD (Sales and Distribution). 

Figure 11 Example New Product Planning Process—Consulting. (From Risk Management Partners, Inc.)...

The output of the production planning process is a set of decisions in response to events in a given time interval. The process can be defined as (Kempf et al. 2011) an ongoing supply-demand system, so a production plan must be generated repeatedly on a regular basis in many periods into the future. During the time interval, the customer may place a tentative order, change or cancel a tentative order, and confirm a tentative order. In resptMise to the cited events, the producer decisions include (Kempf et al. 2011) ... 

Replenishment volume proposed by VMI automatically feeds the production planning process, reducing emergency production orders and imnecessary... 

A cross-functional team is one whose members are drawn from different departments to share their expertise. For example, purchasing may set up a cross-functional team to decide where to purchase some new piece of equipment. The team members in this situation would include a representative from maintenance, finance or accounting, production planning, process engineering, and purchasing. 

The supplier in-plant is also part of the production planning process, so production is planned concurrently with the supplier organisation. This form of integration streamlines the supply process by removing the multi-level planner-buyer-salesman-supplier plant process by making this the responsibility of one individual. This dramatically reduces the demand uncertainty experienced by the supplier organisations. The benefits of this streamlining have also resulted in major business improvements for Bose. These include ... 

Phase 4 - Production Planning. The critical process operations from Phase 3 are ranked with production requirement issues, ultimately translating the important customer requirements to production planning and establishing important actions to be taken. 

The auditor should establish that the supplier has made provision to link all the processes and should follow trails through departments and processes to verify correct use of outputs from interfacing processes e.g. use of SPC charts, FMEA, MSA, control plans and changes to these when the products or processes change. 

The purpose of the control plan is to ensure that all process outputs will be in a state of control by providing process monitoring and control methods to control product and process characteristics. The control plan is covered in section 6 of the APQP manual. It consists of forms containing data for identifying process characteristics and helps to identify sources of variation in the inputs that cause product characteristics to vary. The APQP manual provides excellent guidance on the compilation and use of the control plan so no further guidance is given here. 

Three types of control plan are required. During the product design and development phase, a prototype control plan is required to be produced. During the process design and development phase, a pre-launch or pilot production control plan is required, and during the product and process validation phase, the production control plan is to be issued. 

The production plan referred to previously is a work instruction, as it instructs those to whom it applies to carry out certain tasks. Control procedures may include assembly procedures, plating procedures, painting procedures, maintenance procedures, etc. and differ from process specifications (see later) in that the process specification defines the results to be achieved in operating a process rather than how to run the process. In addition to the list of contents provided in ISO/TS 16949 clause 4.9.2, the documentation should define ... 

The standard also requires that the instructions be derived from appropriate sources, such as the quality plan, the control plan, and the product realization process, which means that all instructions should be traceable to one or more of these documents. They should form a set, so that there are no instructions used outside those that have been approved by the planning team. This is to ensure that no unauthorized practices are employed. Another important aspect to consider is the use of informal practices - practices known only to the particular operator. Process capability should be based on formal routines, otherwise repeatability cannot be assured when operators change. 

The product specification should provide all necessary processing requirements that need to be implemented when carrying out particular processes however, some of the requirements may need to be defined in separate process specifications which are invoked by reference. You may need to develop your own process specifications, but there are many national standards that may suit your needs and they come with the added benefit that they have been proven to work. The quality plan or procedures should not contain any further product requirements but may provide the verification methods to be employed, the precautions to be observed and the recording requirements to be met. You need to identify in your production plans each of these documents at the stage at which they should be applied, otherwise there is the possibility that they may be overlooked. 

Following production launch, process capability and performance should be measured continually in order to demonstrate that your processes remain capable and the capability index continues to rise. Appropriate action should be taken on characteristics that are either unstable or non-capable. Action plans should be implemented to contain process output and continually improve performance. 

The same method as described above can be employed to plan the layout of factory building interiors. Establishing the interior activities and characteristics of the activities must, however, derive from a thorough understanding of the products and processes. 

Process development with particular attention to process profitability and safety and minimization of the environmental impact is presented in Chapter 5. A brief description of the present practice in scale-up, development, and production planning is given and the most promising trends and achievements are presented. Recommendations are given how to achieve success in the scale-up of a process a successful scale-up can be defined as the procedure that allows the same yields and product distribution in a full-scale plant as on a small scale. 

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