Understanding the Essential Functions of Production Planning & Control

An organization is simply a result of many departments & functions working in sync toward a singular goal. And, for such robustness, every enterprise relies on a thorough action plan. In the context of a supply chain industry, this covers the entire functioning from production to delivery. Such astute strategies help a company be entirely in command of the tasks undertaken while also maintaining its competitive edge in the industry.

One such integral aspect of a supply chain is PPC, abbreviated for Production Planning and Control. A self-explanatory term, the production planning and control process covers all the essential aspects of manufacturing. This includes a complete top-to-bottom approach from ordering material to scheduling the workforce, accounting for the machines involved, and distributing the product to the end customer. The entire function of the PPC ensures that a company’s resources can rely on each other with complete transparency during planning and control. In this write-up, we will focus on the essential functions of production planning and control (PPC), which ultimately drive the product’s life cycle.

What Are the Functions of Production Planning and Control?

The listed pointers of PPC all contribute towards making a production chain efficient while keeping the company on a revenue-generating path. These core functionalities need to work in an optimized manner to ensure that there are no last-minute errors in the end-to-end process.

1. Material Management: One key aspect of PPC is deciding on the quantity of raw material required in conjunction with the production timeline. Finalizing the material quota helps a company reduce wastage, minimize inventory fallacy, and cut down on costs related to resources & workforce involved. Handling material management directly correlates with enterprises never running out of stock and subsequently enabling other factions of the supply chain to work fluently.
2. Equipment: It’s one thing having an infrastructure but another to warrant that your equipment complies with your daily production scale. This step includes analyzing equipment downtime issues so that the company prepares itself for any potential bottlenecks during manufacturing. An enterprise keeping a tab on regular maintenance of its machines keeps them safeguarded against any unwarranted breakdown which might halt the usual workflow of their operation. The safety & upkeeping of the machinery involved guarantees rewarding output.
3. Production Method: Citing the resources available to a company, from the workforce to the economy of its daily proceedings, an organization should choose the best method suited to its revenue. When finalizing a production blueprint, management should look for a flexible application that is robust in the face of varied customer demands and can overcome the constraints without any effect on the other cyclic tasks. Implementing production planning and scheduling software can minimize the efforts by enabling cooperation amongst stakeholders & supply chain processes.
4. Manufacturing Routing: Akin to the production method, manufacturing routing ensures that the raw material gets shaped into finished goods without any wastage, improper utilization of resources, or any excessive steps leading to an elongated timeline. In simplistic definition, routing's essential goal is finalizing unprocessed material into a final product with negligible to zero interruptions.
5. Time Estimation: Which process is taking how long forms the crux of the end-to-end supply chain functioning. While quantifying the efficacy of any operation involved, management has to look at the duration estimated in context with the actual timeline utilized to determine the effectiveness of the manufacturing procedure. A company conducts extensive analysis to establish key markers to gauge the methods' contribution.
6. Evaluation: The subsequent stage in the functions of production planning and control is evaluation. This action grades the productivity metric of the manufacturing function & cites the areas of improvement, if any. Timely evaluation helps a company establish an efficient framework & be proactive in its production chain.



Apart from the usual functions of PPC, a few other measures are taken into account to bookend a comprehensive process. The coined mechanism is Corrective action, which involves Expediting & Replanning.

7. Expediting: This step refers to the operational data collection, which is then compared to the ideated manufacturing plan. If any deviations are recorded, corrective measures are taken into account to get back to the outline, which benefits the organization.
8. Replanning: Replanning, in simple layperson's terms, can be defined as a backup plan for expediting; if in case the plan suggested to correct the deviation is not practical, then whole replanning is required to avoid all the critical errors which were found during the application of the primary planning.

The above functions of production planning and control enable manufacturing operations to keep up with the increasing customer demands & eventually aid the end-to-end supply chain process. 3SC, with its SCM solutions, instills visibility, accountability, scalability, and complete collaboration amongst stakeholders across various stages of planning, production & execution. So, if you're looking to make your supply chain operation a thorough & comprehensive one, contact us.