Among the elements that determine the complexity of a manufacturing system is the ability to manufacture a wide range of products. Being such a complex system, it is exposed to a myriad of situations that can compromise its performance. Therefore, in order to maintain its correct operation, it is essential to adequately carry out planning and control tasks. These activities can be considered, in general terms, as the nervous system of a manufacturing operation, which involves the precise execution of a large number of specific functions.

The various activities that make up the planning and control of production are different, according to the different companies and industrial branches where they are applied. However, there are a number of activities that, although performed in a similar way by each company, generate completely different results in each of them. This happens because the type of production planning and control that is effective in one company may not be so for another.

Factors that allow one control system to be more effective than another include the size of the company, the amount of detail required for control, the type of manufacturing process used by the company, the type of products manufactured, and the type of market or markets to which the products are supplied.

Production planning and control activities within manufacturing systems have evolved with the use of computers. From the simplest and least sophisticated to the most complex and precise procedures have been perfected for years with the help of computers. On the other hand, computers have enabled the industry to incorporate powerful software tools for production scheduling, capable of handling all the complexity of a company's manufacturing system with such systems.

However, the great advantage of using computers lies in the fact that they are capable of handling complex simulation and mathematical analysis systems that help the optimization of very complicated production programs to be carried out without their support.

The tools for simulation and mathematical analysis of production systems are also used very successfully in the design of modern manufacturing processes, in which the flexibility of computer-controlled equipment adds incredible degrees of complexity. Nowadays, the presence of new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Data Science or

Artificial Intelligence are revolutionizing the way of planning and controlling a production system. It will be amazing to see what the application of these novel tools will be able to achieve in a few years.

2.1 Procedures for the planning and control of manufacturing systems

In manufacturing systems, we can find a wide number of types of production control (Figure 1). The most common type is order control. This type of control is used in companies with intermittent production systems, the so-called batch shops. Orders are received in the shop floor in different quantities for different products. Because of this, production planning and control must be based on individual orders.

Figure 1. Types of production control.

A second type of production control is flow control. This type of control is applicable to the so-called process industries such as oil, glass, food, among others. In this type of systems, the route is traced, and the programming is made when the arrangement of the plant is made. The production line is built balanced and properly sequenced, scheduling and control is reduced to the scheduling and flow control of the production line. This method of control is most often found in continuous production systems.

Another type of programming and production control is the so-called block control and is widely used in the garment making industry, book and magazine printing, among others. It is used where there is a need to keep separate parts, such as different parts of a garment or different pages of a book, in these cases a block control is essential to avoid mixing parts of different products.

One more type of production planning and control is the load control. It is normally used where there is a bottleneck of machines in the process. An example of its use is in factories, where one machine has a lower capacity than the rest of the machines used to process the product.

Batch control is very common in the food processing industry, this scheduling and control system usually operates where a set of ingredients or components that are related to the final product and that must be handled proportionally batch by batch at a time, are used.

The last type of programming and production control is the so-called project control, which is used when producing unique and very expensive items. Instead of having sets of forms for product routing and scheduling this is done uniquely for each product, and this is done with a special set of material, human, and systems resources, managed by one person in charge of the project (Groover, 2018).

2.2 Planning of machine requirements

From a manufacturing point of view, the capacity of a production system is understood as the level of output (volume of production) that a system can achieve in a given period of time.

When reviewing the capacity of a production system, it is necessary to consider the inputs (resources) and outputs (products), as both will affect the possible capacity of the system. The system resources are raw material, labor, machinery, facilities and methods. The combination of product resources and characteristics will dictate at a given moment the capacity of the system.

It is of interest to know at this point, for a given production level and a known process time (standard time), the machinery requirements that must be met to achieve the desired production level. To determine the machinery requirements, it is necessary to answer the following question:

The answer needs two pieces of information:

1. How many parts do you need to manufacture for each production shift?
2. How long does it take to manufacture a part?

This last piece of data is what we know as the standard time to produce the part. Therefore, to answer these types of questions we use the following formula:

Example:

Answer:

The 8-hour shift has 480 minutes. There are 40 minutes off per shift for breaks, cleaning and others. Therefore, 440 minutes are available for production for each production shift.

The yield or efficiency of the plant is 90%, which leaves us 440x0.9=396 minutes at 100%. So, the production rate of the plant will be:

Therefore, the number of machines required to produce 5000 pieces in each 8-hour shift is:

Algorithms and software applied in manufacturing

Given the complexity of many of today's manufacturing organizations and the need to respond to customer requirements quickly and economically, much of the research and development effort has been focused on perfecting techniques for analyzing complex manufacturing systems and digital tools for production scheduling, in order to replace classical methods that cannot meet the needs of these companies.

Over the years, several proposals have emerged to digitize systems analysis. Among the most relevant is the implementation of the Quick Response Manufacturingtechnique by software.

The pioneers in this type of application emerged at the end of the 1980s, with the Manuplan and MPX Rapid Modeling programs (now discontinued) being among its main exponents. This type of solutions and, in general, the Quick Response Manufacturing technique, were supported by the application of the mathematical theory of queuing networks.

The trend in the manufacturing industry is to decrease the amount of work in process by making the batch size produced smaller. Reducing the production batch in some cases has adverse effects, as doing so requires more setup time on the machines. The use of algorithms based on the theory of queue networks helps in the determination of the optimal size of the production batch. An optimally sized and small batch is one of the requirements for the implementation of the philosophy of just-in-time manufacturing, so the use of manufacturing system analysis techniques can also help this purpose.

One of the most widely used algorithms in queueing network theory for the solution of complex problems that can be modeled and analyzed with this technique was introduced in 1971 by J. P. Buzen, who originally proposed it for the analysis of service requests (accesses) to telecommunications networks and from there it was adopted for the analysis of complex manufacturing systems.

Currently, most of the digital tools that focus on manufacturing have evolved towards cloud platforms, combining data processing techniques and artificial intelligence with a high distributed computing capacity. In the development of this course, you will learn a little more about these technologies and their impact on modern industry.

2.3 Planning of space and labor requirements

From the beginning, during the planning of an industrial plant project, it is necessary to know the total space that the plant will occupy, in order to design the building. A total space requirements sheet is used, analyzed and the space requirements of each department are listed. Production floor space, production support services, employee services, office space and outdoor areas are determined and then entered on the requirements sheet.

The production floor space requirement is the total of the machines and manufacturing stations. The size and shape of the areas for each department can be changed to fit the final shape of the building.

Most industrial layout designs concentrate on floor space, but not everything should be placed on the floor. Before converting the space requirements of each department into floor space, review the utilization of the cubic space the building may have.

Table 1 shows an example of a total space requirement worksheet for the manufacturing area of a metal products company:

Table 2. Example of a requirements work hour.

To calculate the labor requirement of a manufacturing system, it is necessary to know the standard time for the production of each product and the number of products to be manufactured per production shift, as well as the efficiency with which the factory is supposed to work.

Example:

Solution:

Therefore, it is necessary to hire 21 workers.

Modern manufacturing companies mix requirements that have always existed in all organizations, such as determining the space, machinery and labor requirements for a particular production situation. These requirements are determined with classic industrial engineering techniques and, although they are very important points for the organization to determine, there is no complication to do so.

However, new computer-controlled machines or manufacturing centers and the existing complexity in the manufacture of many relatively recent generation products impose the use of sophisticated operations analysis and design programs that assist in the scheduling and control of production on the modern organization under such complex conditions.

Make sure that you:

• Identify the planning methodologies of a manufacturing system.
• Determine the machinery requirements of a manufacturing system.
• Determine the staffing requirements in a manufacturing system

• Groover, M. (2018). Automation Production System and Computer Integrated Manufacturing (5th ed.). United States: Pearson.
  1. Chapter 25: Production Planning And Control Systems
  2. Chapter 3: Operation Analysis

Videos

To learn about the evolution of planning and control systems, check out the following video: 

• POM_ETH Zurich. (2021, May 20). Production Planning and Control [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23yve9QqhRg
  

To learn more about application of artificial intelligence in manufacturing, check out the following video:

• Irish Manufacturing Research. (2020, December 22). AI in Action: Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YBcfcG-2Mk

Readings

To learn more about quick response manufacturing, we recommend reading:

• Doubt, J. (2021). Quick Response Manufacturing for High Mix, Low Volume, High Complexity Manufacturers. Retrieved from https://yadda.icm.edu.pl/baztech/element/bwmeta1.element.baztech-8ac396c8-7f19-4031-a575-54fd1dc5790d
  

To learn more about manufacturing trends, we recommend reading:

• Melito, S. (2022). Top Manufacturing Trends of 2022 Will Reduce Manufacturing Waste. Retrieved from https://www.elastoproxy.com/the-top-manufacturing-trends-of-2022-will-reduce-waste/

Description:

Before doing this activity, review the readings and videos on the topic.

The student will describe the main modern procedures that are used to carry out the planning and control of the manufacturing through an information search and classification.s

Objective:

To identify the main procedures for the planning and control of manufacturing.

Requirements:

Read the suggested chapters according to the course bibliography:

Textbook:

1. Groover, M. (2018). Automation Production System and Computer Integrated Manufacturing (5th ed.). United States: Pearson.
   1. Chapter 25: Production Planning and Control Systems

Instructions:

1. First, research the three main international companies that manufacture electronic components (microprocessors, integrated circuits, electronic memories, among others.) and find out as much information as possible about their manufacturing processes for product production. Based on your results, answer the following questions:
   1. What production planning and control processes do they implement?
   2. What digital tools do they use to support manufacturing processes?
   3. Do you think it is possible to have such a high level of performance today without using some element of artificial intelligence? Why?
2. Then, solve the following problems:
1. A small industry that manufactures bicycle parts has eight specialized machines capable of processing its best-selling product from start to finish. The standard machining time of said product is 200 hours per 500 parts, and the plant works with an eight-hour production shift with a 45-minute break for workers. Considering that the factory efficiency is 90%, what is the availability of parts that you can guarantee daily to your main customers?
2. If the same factory of the previous paragraph were to consider increasing its production by 70% and it is known that the standard labor time required is 35 hours per hundred parts, how many personnel should be hired to ensure this new production goal?
3. Next, prepare a report that serves as evidence of the completion of the activity. Remember to include a small reflection on what you learned
4. In addition, identify the leading companies in the financial sector, describe the planning and control processes they use and develop the rest of the questions correctly.
5. Present your conclusion on the impact of artificial intelligence on modern manufacturing processes.
6. Also, solve the proposed problems and present evidence of their development. Include in the final document the following: the analysis, the procedures developed, and the answers obtained.
7. Finally, prepare the report incorporating your personal conclusions about the activity.

Evaluation criteria:

1. Research of three main international companies that manufacture electronic components.
2. Solution for the problems.
3. Report creation.
4. Planning and control description.
5. Conclusion.
6. Problem analysis.
7. Report with conclusion.

Description:

By investigating the processes of a local or national manufacturing company, the student will identify its processes and explain the type of control it uses to plan and control its production (order control, flow control, block control, etc.).

Instructions:

Perform the following activities individually:

1. Answer the 15 questions from the book's review question, click here.
   Groover, M. (2018). Automation Production System and Computer Integrated Manufacturing (5th ed.). United States: Pearson.
   1. Chapter 2. Manufacturing operations
2. Research about a local or national company and identify the manufacturing processes it uses to manufacture its products. Explain the type of control you are implementing in your processes: command control, flow control, block control and so on.
3. Solve the following problem:

4. Solve the following problem: