PROGRESS ON DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR COMPUTER-AIDED PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT

Production management is a complex set of activities, many of which may be assisted by the use of computer methods. Although most managers believe that their system requirements are unique, the use of many standard software packages by different companies shows that there is much functional commonality. Yet these software assisted systems are often inflexible when there is a need to change functionality and the authors believe that there is a need for increased generality. This paper examines the commonality between systems and asserts that production management systems, examined within a context of planning, simulation, action and feedback, can be represented in a general way which we call a framework. The factors which define the framework include the numbers of levels of plan in the planning hierarchy, the presence or absence of feedback loops, the planning horizons, the planning and feedback frequencies, the delays and misinformation in the planning and feedback processes, etc. Assigning specific values to these factors converts the generalised framework or structure into a representation of a specific company. The framework is thus potentially the basis of a taxonomy of production management systems and also the basis of identifying the requirements of more generalised software. The tasks involved in developing the framework and insights into the needs of systems analysis are discussed.