Unit-9

Introduction to Production Management

Defintion:-The job of coordinating and controlling the activities required to make a product, typically involving effective control of scheduling, cost, performance, quality, and waste requirements.

Functions of Production Management:

The definitions discussed above clearly shows that the concept of production management is related mainly to the organizations engaged in production of goods and services. Earlier these organizations were mostly in the form of one man shops having insignificant problems of managing the productions.

But with development and expansion of production organizations in the shape of factories more complicated problems like location and lay out, inventory control, quality control, routing and scheduling of the production process etc. came into existence which required more detailed analysis and study of the whole phenomenon.

This resulted in the development of production management in the area of factory management. In the beginning the main function of production management was to control labour costs which at that time constituted the major proportion of costs associated with production.

But with development of factory system towards mechanization and automation the indirect labour costs increased tremendously in comparison to direct labour costs, e.g., designing and packing of the products, production and inventory control, plant layout and location, transportation of raw materials and finished products etc. The planning and control of all these activities required more expertise and special techniques.

In modern times production management has to perform a variety of functions, namely: 

(i) Design and development of production process.

(ii) Production planning and control.

(iii) Implementation of the plan and related activities to produce the desired output.

(iv) Administration and co-ordination of the activities of various components and departments responsible for producing the necessary goods and services.

However, the responsibility of determining the output characteristics and the distribution strategy followed by an organization including pricing and selling policies are normally outside the scope of Production Management.

Scope of Production Management:

The scope of production management is indeed vast. Commencing with the selection of location, production management covers such activities as acquisition of land, constructing building, procuring and installing machinery, purchasing and storing raw materials and converting them into saleable products. Added to the above are other related topics such as quality management, maintenance management, production planning and control, methods improvement and work simplification and other related areas.