Orchestrating the manufacturing symphony: designs, decisions, and dynamics of production planning and control

Manufacturers face the challenge of coordinating material supply, capacity availability, and customer demand. This coordination is achieved through production planning and control. Planning involves organizing material deliveries and capacity usage in advance, while control monitors ongoing processes to ensure that production departments run smoothly.

Technological advances offer opportunities for further improvement. Manufacturers are digitizing their processes, making machines smarter and enabling real-time decision-making on the shop floor, which makes flexible planning and control feasible. However, manufacturers are also facing new threats. Globalized supply chains are prone to disruptions due to wars and natural disasters, such as the Russia-Ukraine war and tensions between the US and China. This complicates the planning and control of internal processes.

This thesis explores how manufacturers can effectively respond to these changes. First, to fully benefit from digital technology, this thesis outlines the inadequacy of the centralized top-down decision-making that permeates classic planning and control structures. Instead, it proposes alternative structures and develops corresponding planning and control techniques, all aimed at integrating decision-making at the decentralized control level. The results demonstrate that these novel techniques lead to more on-time deliveries, lower work-in-progress, and reduced inventory levels. Second, the research highlights that inevitable disruptions force manufacturers to redesign their planning structures and processes to maintain control during crises. In conclusion, updating internal organizational structures is crucial for manufacturers to be resilient against disruptions and to fully capitalize on digital technologies.