IMPORTANT PARTS OF PRODUCTIVE SYSTEMS

Productive systems consist of six important activities as follows:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Product design
Production planning and scheduling
Purchasing and materials management
Inventory control
Work flow layout
Quality control

Product Design
Customers expect that the products they buy would perform according to
assigned functions. A good product design assures that this will be so. Customers
avoid buying products with poor product design. An example is that certain brand of
ballpen which fails to write after one or two days of actual use. This happens
because of poor product design.
Product design refers to the process of creating a set of product
specifications appropriate to the demands of the situation.
Companies wanting to maintain or improve its market share keeps a product
design team composed of engineers, manufacturing, and marketing specialists.
Production Planning and Scheduling
Production planning may be defined as forecasting the future sales of a
given product, translating this forecast into the demand it generates for various
production facilities, and arranging for the procurement of these facilities.
Production planning is a very important activity because it helps
management to make decisions regarding capacity. When the right decisions are
made, there will be less opportunities for wastages.
Scheduling is the phase of production control involved in developing
timetables that specify how long each operation in the production process takes.
Efficient scheduling assures the optimization of the use of human and nonhuman
resources.
Purchasing and Materials Management
Firms need to purchase supplies and materials required in the various
production activities. The management of purchasing and materials must be
undertaken with a high degree of efficiency and effectiveness specially in firms
engaged in high volume production. The wider variety of supplies and materials
needed adds to the necessity of proper managing and purchasing of materials.
Materials management refers to the approach that seeks efficiency of
operation through integration of all material acquisition, movement, and storage
activities in the firm.

Inventory Control
Inventory control is the process of establishing and maintaining appropriate
levels of reserve stocks of goods. As supplies and materials are required by firms in
the production process, these must be kept available when they are needed. Too
much reserves of stocks will penalize the firm in terms of high storage costs and
other related risks like obsolescence and theft. Too little reserves, on the other
hand, may mean lost income opportunities if production activities are hampered. A
balance between the two extremes must be determined.
There are ways of achieving proper inventory control. These are as follows:
1 determining reorder point and reorder quantity
2 determing economic order quantity
3 the use of just-in-time (JIT) method of inventory control
4 the use of the material requirement planning (MRP) method of planning and
controlling inventories.
Work-Flow Layout
Work-flow layout is the process of determining the physical arrangement of
the production system. In the transformation process, the flow of work may be done
either haphazardly or orderly.
The job of the operations manager is to assure that coost-effective workinflow layout is installed. A good work-flow layout will have the following benefits.
1 Minimize investment in equipment.
2 Minimize overall production time.
3. Use existing space most effectively.
4. Provide for employee convenience, safety, and comfort.
5. Maintain flexibility of arrangement and operation.
6. Minimize material handling cost.
7. Minimize variation in types of material-handling equipment.
8. facilitate the manufacturing (or service) process.
9. Facilitate the organizational structure.
Quality Control
Quality control refers to the measurement of products or services against
standards set by the company. Certain standard requirements are maintained by
the management to facilitate production and to keep customers satisfied.

Poor quality control breeds customer complaints, returned merchandise,

expensive lawsuits, and huge promotional expenditures.