Master Planning and Scheduling, 4th Edition

2Why Master Planning and Scheduling

Success in business is easy if you do two things well: plan your work and work your plan.

The Four Cornerstones of a Manufacturing Business

All manufacturing entities have a set of cornerstones—markers that define who they are, whom they serve, and the resources they draw upon. If they have been in operation for any length of time, they have customers, products, internal resources, and a set of suppliers. These are their cornerstones and getting these cornerstones to fit together profitably is one of the challenges of manufacturing.

This view of the manufacturing business is represented in Figure 2.1 on page 26. Here, each of the cornerstones is disconnected, and in the center are the two qualities that must bring them together: vision and competence. Vision is the creative element that sees new and effective ways to combine the resources of the organization (human, material, equipment, and financial) with those provided by suppliers to create products that serve customer needs. Competence is the sum total of organizational and technical skills that transform the intangible vision into tangible plans and the activities that make the vision a reality. These competencies include research and innovation, sales and marketing, design and engineering, manufacturing and procurement, and so forth.

Figure 2.1 Using Vision and Competence to Connect ...