Yuqian #5 - Production Planning 2

Question 1

What is the Master Production Schedule (MPS)? How is it related to the Aggregate Plan?

Answer 1

A time-phased plan specifying how many and when the firm plans to build each end item. The aggregate plan is disaggregated into the master production schedule, as shown in the example below

Question 2

List the three main objectives of the master production schedule

Answer 2

1. Determine timing/quantity of completion of end items
2. Schedule end items to be completed promptly and when promised to customer
3. Avoid overloading and underloading the production facility (production capacity is efficiently utilised)

Question 3

What are the three main inputs and three main outputs for a master production schedule?

Answer 3

Question 4

What is rough-cut planning?

Answer 4

As orders are slotted in the master production schedule, rough-cut planning is used to identify any overloading or underloading, allowing us to better balance capacity and demand.

Question 5

After creating the master production schedule, we move onto material requirement planning. What does this involve?

Answer 5

Material requirement planning is a means for determining the number of parts, components, and materials needed to produce a product (end item), and also time scheduling this information

Question 6

A material requirement planning system is used to simultaneously meet which three objectives?

Answer 6

1. Availability - materials/products available for production and delivery to customers
2. Inventory - low as possible
3. Planning - manufacturing activities, delivery schedules, purchasing activities, etc.

Question 7

What are the three inputs and five primary outputs for a material requirement planning system?

Answer 7

Inputs: master production schedule, bill of materials, and inventory database

Outputs: planned orders, order release notices, changes in due dates, cancellations or suspensions, and inventory status data

Question 8

A bill of materials is one of the primary inputs in material requirement planning. What is this?

Answer 8

A bill of materials is a list of all the raw materials, parts, subassemblies, and assemblies needed to produce one unit of a product. It can be visualised using a product structure tree, where all components are listed by levels, as shown below. For computational reasons, identical items occurring on multiple levels should be lowered to the lowest level in which that item occurs, e.g. the T on the right should move one down

Question 9

What is a time fence?

Answer 9

A time fence is used to determine the degree of change we can make to our schedule, as shown below