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The production control problems in most large companies are probably too complicated to be solved by a single decision-making process. In a large plant, one person cannot make a plan that satisfies both the long-term horizon and the short-term scheduling decisions on the shop floor. Think about it, they would have possibly hundreds or thousands of products and possibly hundreds and thousands of resources. Because the production control problem in most plants is large and complex, it needs to be decomposed for it to be solvable.

You cannot use best-of-class production control methods or have world-class control objectives until you are close to world class in the first place. Unfortunately, not everyone understands this and there will be corporate mandates and other directives issued that just do not make sense. For example, some firms mandate JIT levels of inventory for job shops. This is just plain wrong as job shops have dynamic routes, resource conflicts, and queues that will build up. However, this does not prevent people from stating that as an objective, charting it, or rating performance by it.

However, we do have some ideas on the general supply chain topic suitable for this chapter. Production control throughout a supply chain is easiest when the product mix is low, volumes relatively high, each element in the chain is supplying one main customer and plant, customization is delayed until assembly, and everyone is running a focused factory with flow lines. If you visualize a chain, each link looks the same and the capacities are matched. In these types of chains, the goods can flow through the system with low inventories, predictable times, and quick response.