Tips on Production Planning and Inventory Control
Production Planning and Inventory Control: When you’re manufacturing products, performing inventory control and production planning should be a huge part of your business strategy. Production planning is when you plan out the different processes in your production system for the future. This will help you in planning whether to produce more or less products relating to market demand. So for example you are selling beer, your type of beer might be seasonal.
So with production planning you can plan out your production system to respond to demand when it comes. As a result of that you could rent more machinery when the demand is high in that particular season. So you can produce more products to meet the rise in demand. On the other hand if that season had passed you can cut back on machinery and raw materials. This will help you to cut cost and prevent over production which can be quite costly.
You have three main types of production planning strategy short range which usually range from a week or 6 months. Medium range planning is usually from 6 to 18 months with monthly increments. Long range planning is when you’re planning for more than a year. Production planning can help you to evaluate your current production processes to spot areas of weakness to improve on. When creating a production plan you got to look at the labor power needed to the work done. As stated before planning for the machinery requirements is also another factor.
Furthermore tracking the time phase and sequence of the different processes within your production system will help you to overview the speed of operations. To make your production planning more effective you need to also constantly monitor your different processes. This will make certain that everything is working as according to plan. Lastly if you spot any issues, while executing your production plan such as in the different operations you must quickly fix it, little problems can lead to huge disasters.
Inventory control will help you to manage to your inventory and keep track of your products. Similar to production planning, inventory control can help you to react to customer demands. For example if you currently have a certain amount of products in your inventory which is not enough to meet the demand.
You can simply contact the production manager to order more products. Inventory control will also help you to keep track of the products to prevent spoilage and theft. This can get pretty costly if it turns in an epidemic within your organization and gets out of hand. You have three main kinds of inventory that you can focus on raw materials, finished goods and partially finished goods.
Managers must carefully control these inventories because they can have a huge impact on your business. Inventory control can also help in securing the best rate of stock turnover for each unit. It can also help balance the stock relating to the value, color, size, color and price in proportion to demand and sales trends. In addition it can also help to make certain that you always deliver good quality products to your customers.
This will help to build trust and create a good customer relationship for the long term. In conclusion as you can see both production planning and inventory control have different functions but share similar goals. They are both there to help you as a manager to keep track of your product. As a result of that it will help you reduce cost and bring the best quality product to customers.