7.1.1 Incorporation of Detailed Planning and Control

In a manufacturing company the actual production planning is integrated in the general framework imposed by the industry in question and by corporate policy. Commencing with the strategic alignment of a company and the sales planning deriving from this we obtain the general framework for production planning. Investment and growth planning will also be part of this strategic planning in order to provide the necessary production capacities for the production processes.

This brief introduction should make clear that demands relating to the temporal validity and precision of a plan and also the planning problems bound up with it will differ very greatly depending on the level (rough or detailed planning) and the point of view (operations planning and scheduling/production control) of the target group in question.

As regards production planning, here too the goal- and need-oriented approach of a multi-level production planning system has proved itself to be a good basis for an integrated production management.

To enable a better understanding of the terminology and of the detailed planning in MES systems (this will be examined in detail below) an overview is provided of the different planning levels: