Manufacturing in Plants: Processes and People

• Production entails transforming tangible and intangible inputs into goods and services.
• Processes utilize resources to generate suitable outputs, focusing on performance, quality, reliability, quantity, and production cost.

Plant Considerations

• Plants are industrial sites with buildings and machinery where workers manufacture or process goods.
• Considerations for plant design include future demands, building layout, equipment performance, maintenance, installation safety, and social responsibility.

Processes

• Essential elements to make the product, integrating technical and organizational aspects.
• Important process factors include available skills and capacity, production type, plant layout, safety, and maintenance needs.

Programmes

• Programmes are plans to achieve goals, including purchasing, transforming, maintenance, and cash management.

People

• When involving people in production, organizations need to consider wages, health and safety, work conditions, motivation, trade unions, and education.

Production Planning and Control

• Production planning and control are key mechanisms for factory operations, aiming to produce the required product with the best and cheapest method, quality, and timing.
• Components include job/task scheduling, material resource planning, facility location, factory loading, capacity planning, estimating quantity and costs, and final quality checks.

Production Planning Process

• Steps include forecasting demand, material and production scheduling, capacity planning, factory loading, final checks, and issuing work orders.

Routing

• Process determines where to make garments, including what is required, items to make, location, cost and production control forms.

Scheduling

• Process prioritizes garments and issues factory orders in the right sequence.
• Scheduling input into the Cutting Room can differ from the Sewing Room, requiring compromises or buffer stocks for a smooth flow.

Progressing

• It is a daily check to ensure orders follow the plan.
• Involves progress clerks monitoring orders through production stages, reporting hold-ups to the planning department.
• Involves gathering and disseminating information to departments that may affect production.
• Departments should know about pattern changes and the types of lining and trimming required.

Manufacturing

• Production Planning is summarized into feeding the factories with work, making factors of production available, and ensuring output matches customer requirements.

Functions of Planning and Control

• The dual function of production control involves planning and control techniques to foresee each step, arrange operations efficiently, and ensure plans are achieved.

Planning Aims

• Planning intends to reduce the mental labor of production operators by systematically establishing what work is to be done, how, where, and when.

Production Planning Elements

• Includes production material specification and availability, ensuring the operator has necessary raw materials.
• Quality standards necessary for planning control, including standards purchase specifications.
• Ensuring necessary machinery and specifying the quantity of work per operator hour.
• Determining the sequence of operations, with permissible variations and flexibility within the production line.
• Establishing time allowances for each operation to measure efficiency and aid job planning.
• Derived from machine land charts, showing the volume of work ahead, allowing for unforeseen issues.

Controlling aspects of production control

• Releasing orders, clarifying tasks for operators.
• Material control facilitates the supply of correct material from stores, with arrangements for moving material between departments.
• Controlling service entails providing tools or attachments.
• Control over due dates includes observation of machine loading, particularly delays.
• Controlling quantity and quality involves observing work in process to ensure the quantity has been processed according to standards.
• Control over replacements includes raw materials is reissued for replacements.
• Control over labor efficiency involves observing and recording time taken on each unit of work for comparison with the planned time allowance.
• Control over progress of orders involves analyzing completed work to assess whether the job will be completed by the promised delivery date.