CONSULTING · TRAINING · COACHING
There is a situation we often see in manufacturing businesses: general chaos is labelled a “planning problem.” Some materials sit in inventory while critical parts are missing. Instead of keeping work flowing, employees spend their energy chasing urgent jobs.
Preparing a master production schedule and handing the weekly workload to the shop floor does not automatically establish the daily sequence. Relationships between departments begin to revolve around “What can I get you, mate?” and “What are you going to give me?”
What does the master production schedule determine?
The Master Production Schedule, or MPS, defines which products will be produced, in what quantities and in which periods. It is considered alongside demand, inventory targets, capacity and material constraints, and provides input to material requirements planning.
The planning horizon and time buckets depend on the business’s procurement lead times, product structure and way of working. The same weekly or monthly intervals do not apply to every business.
Who establishes the daily sequence on the shop floor?
In this article, I use Daily Production Schedule, or DPS, to mean a daily or shift production schedule. It makes clear which job will run on which resource and in what order, whether the material is ready and what the next process needs.
Breakdowns, quality problems or changing orders may require rescheduling. Yet immediately bringing every new request to the front also disrupts flow. It must be clear under which conditions the plan will change, who will make the decision and which time window will be protected.
Production planning and control, purchasing and shop-floor teams should be able to see the same priorities. Identifying deviations and assigning responsibility in short meetings creates a more reliable system than spending the whole day requesting work from one another.
The value of a plan comes from its practical execution on the shop floor and the joint management of deviations.
