TABLE OF CONTENTS There are two main categories of information official and environmental.
Official information is what is found in the bills of material, material masters, engineering documents, and the policies and procedures manuals.
Environmental information is all of the information not in the computer or on paper. It is the information about the people, culture, weather, attitudes, informal policies, possible issues with the workforce, knowledge about the vendors and customers, and much more.
For the hard or middle-of-the-road situations, the environmental information is far more important than the information found on hard drives or on the shelf.
The official information can be used for mechanical or rote scheduling.
The acquisition and interpretation of environmental information is a cognitive skill.
This is the last of the what chapters. What information is used in planning and scheduling? In previous chapters, we tried to give a broad and practical definition to production control, discuss the functions and tasks of production control, and talk about personal characteristics that are important when hiring and training people in production control. In this chapter, we will discuss the type of information that is important to consider for production control decisions in more detail.
The official information typically used in production control consists of the data associated with manpower planning, material records, process routings, bills of material, current inventory levels, purchase orders, shipping and receiving records, firm orders or deliveries, and projected or forecasted sales. These are the primary...
