PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT — SIMPLE OR COMPLEX

Abstract

Theoretical production planning and scheduling is actually very simple task: The plant gets orders which defines the product, the quantity and delivery dates. The resources of the plants are known, the product bill of material is known and the task of production scheduling is to make sure that the orders will be ready on time, that's all. It seems strange that in order to meet this simple task, over 100 complex production planning methods were proposed. Some of the outstanding ones are: PICS; MRP; ERP; GT; TOC; FMS; IMS; CIM; CE; JIT; Kanaban; TQM; Agent…, AGILE etc. Yet the search for "THE" method is carried on. In this paper an attempt to analyze why production planning is regarded as a complex task, and why the search for "THE" production planning method is still an open topic for researchers. Furthermore, to demonstrate how introduction of flexibility will restore the simplicity of production planning.