In increasingly competitive markets with shrinking profit margins, manufacturing plants face challenges of true operations management with plant control systems. Production management, also called operations management, is the planning and control of industrial processes to ensure that they move smoothly at the required level. Techniques of production management are employed in service as well as in manufacturing industries.
Production management is the direction and control of processes that produce products and services. The term is associated with manufacturing, but can be applied to other areas such as the management of a technology service. Hence, the job is coordinating and controlling the activities required to make a product, typically involving effective control of scheduling, cost, quality, performance, and waste requirements.
Production management is often focused on efficiency, productivity, and quality. Manufacturing processes are typically highly optimized to eliminate wasted labour, capital, materials, energy, space, and time. Other common objectives are sustainability, workplace health and safety, and compliance. The term is also occasionally applied to other types of management such as the management of a production environment.
It also involves processes taking inputs such as parts and creating outputs such as products. This involves elements of production planning, budget management, management accounting, inventory management, quality assurance, efficiency, automation, labour, compliance, sustainability, product development, sales and operations planning, distribution, process improvement, performance management, quality control, and distribution.
Planning and control
Production management’s responsibilities are summarized by the “five Ms”: Men, machines, methods, materials, and money. “Men” refers to the human element in operating systems. Since the vast majority of manufacturing personnel work in the physical production of goods, people management is one of the production manager’s most important responsibilities.
Although the five Ms capture the essence of the major tasks of production management, control summarizes its single most important issue. The production manager must plan and control the process of production so that it moves smoothly at the required level of output while meeting cost and quality objectives.
Process control has two purposes: First, to ensure that operations are performed according to plan, and second, to continuously monitor and evaluate the production plan to see if modifications can be devised to better meet cost, quality, delivery, flexibility, or other objectives.
Methods and models
Because of the enormous complexity of typical production operations and the almost infinite number of changes that can be made and the alternatives that can be pursued, a productive body of quantitative methods has been developed to solve production management problems. Most of these techniques have emerged from the fields of industrial engineering, operations research, and systems engineering. Specialists in these fields are increasingly using computers and information processing to solve production problems involving the masses of data associated with large numbers of workers, massive inventories, and huge quantities of work in process that characterize most of today’s production operations.
Indeed, many mass production operations could not run without the support of these industrial engineers and technical specialists. The importance of production management to the business firm depends on a number of factors, including accomplishment of the firm’s objectives and managing goodwill and image. It also helps to introduce new products, support other functional areas, help face competition, optimum utilization of resources, and expansion of the firm.
Primary principles of production management
Training must improve efficiency, and giving workers accountability allows businesses to slash their set-up times. Businesses need to demonstrate that treating raw material suppliers as integral components of their own production process leads to a number of benefits. Suppliers given training in processes, machinery, inventory systems, and set-up procedures were able to react positively and swiftly when problems occurred.
Some employers have a formal training scheme that will cover the production process, company policies, and job requirements. Large companies may offer graduate programs which provide experience in different areas before specialization. In smaller firms, one may just learn on the job from more experienced colleagues.
In summary, production management deals with producing goods/services at the right time, quantity, and quality with minimum cost. This piece will hopefully arm novice manufacturers and students in this field with practical skills on tools for demand management, production planning and control, and inventory management in manufacturing companies.
Taslim Ahammad is an Assistant Professor, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Science and Technology University (BSMRSTU), Gopalganj, Bangladesh.