Material Management and Production Control
In a classical organization it is common to have to distinct groups:
- one dedicated to customer care;
- one dedicated to production and vendor scheduling.
The result is unfortunately always the same: a daily conflict between these two teams. One saying it can not supply its customers because Production or suppliers have not delivered on time, the other arguing that customer demand had changed.
These problems are deferred to their hierarchical managers who review these issues generally in the daily meeting with the Supply Chain Manager. Consequently, their treatment is slow and involves many hierarchical levels, which is generally unnecessary and time consuming.
A rule has to be respected in a lean organization:
less levels are involved in a decision, more the organization is responsive and effective.
In this case, it is more efficient to have a team managing the complete flow, from suppliers to customers under the management of a single leader, rather than 2 teams creating a break in the flow due to their own activity.
If the domain to cover is too large, you can split the Team by activities or markets but always try to define organizations controlling for each of them a complete flow.
Activities and responsibilities
2 mains focus:
- customer demand/orders management: the focus is to understand what the customer wants and insure the delivery of its orders;
- material and ressources management: the focus is to insure that internal and external ressources are able to satisfy the demand based on a planning.
The 2 activities are linked by a key process for the short term (generaly 3 months): the Master Production Schedule.
Main functions
All these activities can be grouped in 3 functions:
- Customer care;
- Scheduler;
- MPS/S&OP Analyst;
Managed by the Material and Production Control Manager.
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