TABLE OF CONTENTS Supply chain management is easiest when there are few choices to make. One plant makes something, one plant uses it in an assembly.
Supply chain management is hard when there are many possible places to obtain the material or component and many places that can assemble the final product.
Hierarchical production control reduces complexity by having each layer guide the next. For example, planning for the whole problem is done and then the master plan is given to the scheduling level for sequencing.
Focused factory control models reduce the complexity by having fewer products, parts, and resources for each person or decision processes to deal with.
Lean and agile manufacturing strategies require excellent basic manufacturing to be in place first. First comes quality, then comes repeatability, then comes speed and efficiency. Not the other way around. You do it backwards and you get the stuff that is usually associated with the back end of a process.
There are many information systems used for production control (MRP/MRP-II/ERP), but the core philosophy and approach are the same.
A good manufacturing execution system is an essential element of a solution strategy if the manufacturing process is complex.
In Chapter 1, we introduced a view of production control that centered around Jake and the concept of scheduling hardness. Jake and other schedulers do not exist in a vacuum and production control is a concept-heavy activity.
There are many concepts and theories associated with production control. Terms like...
