Dominant Problems of Production Management And Methods to Tackle Them

Production management comprises decision-making concerned with production process resulting in the production of the wanted things under limited cost and according to time schedule. As such, we have to make two main types of decisions-one for the design of the system and the other related to the operation and control of the system inclusive of long-run and short-run decisions.

We will have to give emphasis on the factors of cost, service and reliability of both functional and time performance that depend on the basic policy of the whole concern and the general nature of production of goods or services to be rendered. In this way, generally, economic concerns will most emphasize cost based upon quality and delivery of goods.

Long-run decisions based on the production design system will be as given below:

(i) Selection of the product – First of all the product is to be selected to the requirements of people to fetch more appeal.

(ii) Design of the product – Selection and design are greatly related mutually. They hay; interactions of strong nature with capability of the product. The design will create the appreciation of the people.

(iii) Selection of equipment and processes – There are many equipment and processes. The equipment and processes should be such that concern can cope up within its capital limit prescribed for the equipment and processes should be such to cope up the design.

(iv) Production design of items processed – Production cost interacts greatly with the design of parts, products, paper work forms. Design decision mostly set the limiting characteristics of cost and processing of the system.

(v) Job design – Total system design includes many things of which job design is an integral part. It involves the basic organization of work and the integration of human engineering data to produce designed jobs optimally.

(vi) Site of the industry and business-The decisions about location of the system play an important part if the balance of cost factors determined by nearness to markets and material supply is critical. Location should be near to market so that the transportation expenses are not more and supply of material does not pose any great problem due to seasons.

(vii) Facility layout-All decisions regarding design capacity, basic modes of production shifts, use of overtime and subcontracting must be seen. Besides operations and equipment must be situated in a pattern that lessens overall material handling cost or meets the needs of some more complicated criterion. The latter need is most difficult for the complex intermittent model where routes change. Many detailed problems are connected with each other so as to specify sufficiently the layout of a production system. These include heating, lighting and other utility needs, the allocation of storing space and the design of the building to accommodate the layout.

Short-run decisions concerning the design of operation and control systems are follows
(i) Inventory control—Decisions should be made regarding inventory at demand.

(ii) Production control—Decisions should be made relating to allocation of productive capacity consistent with demand and inventory policy. Feasible schedules must be worked out, and the load on men and machines and the law of production should be in control.

(iii) Maintenance and reliability of the systems—Decisions should be done for the efforts of maintenance, recognition of the machine down- time may itself be connected with important costs of loss of sales.

(iv) Quality control—While controlling the quality care should be taken that defective parts are not produced and shipped. If at all it should be seen that errors arc tolerable and the good parts are sent. Inspection should be done and covered in the cost against probable losses due to passing defective material or services.

(v) Labor control—Most products need labor and it costs much for services. Production planning needs labor appraisal and so we find much efforts is wasted to develop work measurement and wage payment systems.

(vi) Cost control and improvement—It is the duty of the production supervisors to see that daily decisions regarding the balance of labor, material and overhead costs are done to the satisfaction upto minimum. The individual production systems change these factors important in production management. No doubt every system faces these problem to some extent in common. However individual differences can also be there.