Traditional Production Planning and Control

Abstract

A conventional batch manufacturing facility consists of a number of manually operated machines; jobs flow through the facility, following a number of different routes, with each job being processed on one or more machines. For most batch manufacturing concerns, perhaps the major characteristic that affects the production planning and control function is the complexity of the manufacturing system. A typical batch manufacturer may have thousands of different batches each month passing through a hundred machines. The interrelationships between jobs flowing through the manufacturing systems leads to a tremendously intricate combinatorial problem. The traditional approach that has met with some success has been to break down the problem into a hierarchy of levels.