Production Planning and Control Interview Questions & Answers

Question 1. What Is The Meaning Of Production Planning?

Answer :

Production planning is the planning of production and manufacturing modules in a company or industry. It utilizes the resource allocation of activities of employees, materials and production capacity, in order to serve different customers.

Question 2. What Is The Cycle Of Production?

Answer :

Production cycle is used in two meanings: broad: a production process that begins with raw materials and ends with finished product, narrow: time period of the production process from raw materials to finished product.

Question 3. What Does A Production Planner Do?

Answer :

Production planners, also known as production schedulers, managers, controllers and coordinators, are involved in the logistics of supply chain management. Most of their time is spent on business and organizational aspects of producing and distributing products.

Question 4. What Is Production Control?

Answer :

Production control is the activity of monitoring and controlling any particular production or operation. Production control is often run from a specific control room or operations room.

Question 5. What Is The Production Planning And Control?

Answer :

Production planning is the planning of production and manufacturing modules in a company or industry. It utilizes the resource allocation of activities of employees, materials and production capacity, in order to serve different customers.

Question 6. What Are The Types Of Production Control?

Answer :

Types of production control : In the manufacturing world, production planning and control features four stages: Routing, Scheduling, Dispatching, and Follow Up. The first two relate to production planning while the second two relate to control.

Question 7. What Is Ppc In Production?

Answer :

The PPC Cycle refers to Production Planning Control. It has three phases—preplanning, planning, controlling. The pre-planning phase consists of product development, sales forecasting, factory or plant layout, equipment selection policy, and preplanning of production just prior to large scale production.

Question 8. What Are The Objectives Of Production Planning?

Answer :

objectives of production planning are as follows:

• To ensure right quantity and quality of raw material, equipment, etc. are available during times of production.
• To ensure capacity utilization is in tune with forecast demand at all the time.

Question 9. What Are The Benefits Of Production Planning?

Answer :

• Organization can deliver a product in a timely and regular manner.
• Supplier are informed will in advance for the requirement of raw materials.
• It reduces investment in inventory.
• It reduces overall production cost by driving in efficiency.

Question 10. What Are The Strategies Taken Care By Production Planning?

Answer :

Production planning takes care of two basic strategies

1. product planning
2. process planning.

Production planning is done at three different time dependent levels i.e. long-range planning dealing with facility planning, capital investment, location planning, etc.; medium-range planning deals with demand forecast and capacity planning and lastly short term planning dealing with day to day operations.

Question 11. What Are The Factors Of Production Control?

Answer :

Production control cannot be same across all the organization. Production control is dependent upon the following factors:

• Nature of production( job oriented, service oriented, etc.).
• Nature of operation.
• Size of operation.

Question 12. What Are The Advantages Of Robust Production Control?

Answer :

The advantages of robust production control are as follows:

• Ensure a smooth flow of all production processes.
• Ensure production cost savings thereby improving the bottom line.
• Control wastage of resources.
• It maintains standard of quality through the production life cycle.

Question 13. What Are The Objectives Of Production Control?

Answer :

objectives of production control are as follows:

• Regulate inventory management
• Organize the production schedules
• Optimum utilization of resources and production process 

Question 14. What Are The Stages Of Production Planning & Control?

Answer :

Production Planning & Control is done in three stages namely,

1. Pre-planning
2. Planning
3. Control.

Stage 1: Pre-Planning : Under this phase of production planning, basic ground work on the product design, layout design and work flow are prepared. The operations relating to the availability scope and capacity of men, money materials, machines, time are estimated.

Stage 2: Planning : This is a phase where a complete analysis on routing, estimating and scheduling is done. It also tries to find out the areas of concern for short time and long time so that prominent planning can be prepared.

Stage 3: Control : Under this phase, the functions included are dispatching, follow up, inspection and evaluation. It tries to analyze the expedition of work in progress. This is one of the important phases of the Production Planning and Control.

Question 15. What Are The Main Elements Of Production Planning & Control?

Answer :

Main elements of Production Planning & Control :

The following are main elements of Production Planning and Control.

1. Routing
2. Loading
3. Scheduling
4. Dispatching
5. Follow up
6. Inspection
7. Corrective

Routing: It is about selection of path or route through which raw materials pass in order to make it into a finished product. The points to be noted while routing process are – full capacity of machines, economical and short route and availability of alternate routing. Setting up time for the process for each stage of route is to be fixed. Once overall sequence are fixed, then the standard time of operations are noted using work measurement technique.

Loading and scheduling:  Loading and Scheduling are concerned with preparation of workloads and fixing of starting and completing date of each operation. On the basis of the performance of each machine, loading and scheduling tasks are completed.According to Kimball and Kimball, scheduling is defined as the determination of the time that should be required to perform the entire series as routed, making allowance for all factors concerned.

Dispatching: Dispatching is the routine of setting productive activities in motion through the release of orders and instructions, in accordance with previously planned time and sequence, embodied in route sheet and schedule charts. It is here the orders are released.

Expediting / Follow-up:  It is a control tool which brings an idea on breaking up, delay, rectifying error etc., during the progress of work.

Inspection: Inspection is to find out the quality of executed work process.

Corrective: At evaluation process, a thorough analysis is done and corrective measures are taken in the weaker spots.

Question 16. What Are The Types Of Production Systems?

Answer :

Types of Production Systems : A production system can be defined as a transformation system in which a saleable product or service is created by working upon a set of inputs. Inputs are usually in the form of men, machine, money, materials etc. Production systems are usually classified on the basis of the following:

• Type of product,
• Type of production line,
• Rate of production,
• Equipments used etc

They are broadly classified into three categories:

1. Job shop production.
2. Batch production.
3. Mass production.

Question 17. Explain Job Production?

Answer :

Job Production :

In this system products are made to satisfy a specific order. However that order may be produced-

• only once
• or at irregular time intervals as and when new order arrives
• or at regular time intervals to satisfy a continuous demand

The following are the important characteristics of job shop type production system:

• Machines and methods employed should be general purpose as product changes are quite frequent.
• Planning and control system should be flexible enough to deal with the frequent changes in product requirements.
• Man power should be skilled enough to deal with changing work conditions.
• Schedules are actually non existent in this system as no definite data is available on the product.
• In process inventory will usually be high as accurate plans and schedules do not exist.
• Product cost is normally high because of high material and labor costs.
• Grouping of machines is done on functional basis (i.e. as lathe section, milling section etc.)
• This system is very flexible as management has to manufacture varying product types.
• Material handling systems are also flexible to meet changing product requirements.

Question 18. Explain Batch Production?

Answer :

Batch production is the manufacture of a number of identical articles either to meet a specific order or to meet a continuous demand. Batch can be manufactured either-

• only once
• or repeatedly at irregular time intervals as and when demand arise
• or repeatedly at regular time intervals to satisfy a continuous demand

The following are the important characteristics of batch type production system:

• As final product is somewhat standard and manufactured in batches, economy of scale can be availed to some extent.
• Machines are grouped on functional basis similar to the job shop manufacturing.
• Semi automatic, special purpose automatic machines are generally used to take advantage of the similarity among the products.
• Labor should be skilled enough to work upon different product batches.
• In process inventory is usually high owing to the type of layout and material handling policies adopted.
• Semi automatic material handling systems are most appropriate in conjunction with the semi automatic machines.
• Normally production planning and control is difficult due to the odd size and non repetitive nature of order.

Question 19. Explain Mass Production?

Answer :

In mass production, same type of product is manufactured to meet the continuous demand of the product. Usually demand of the product is very high and market is going to sustain same demand for sufficiently long time.

The following are the important characteristics of mass production system:

• As same product is manufactured for sufficiently long time, machines can be laid down in order of processing sequence. Product type layout is most appropriate for mass production system.
• Standard methods and machines are used during part manufacture.
• Most of the equipments are semi automatic or automatic in nature.
• Material handling is also automatic (such as conveyors).
• Semi skilled workers are normally employed as most of the facilities are automatic.
• As product flows along a pre defined line, planning and control of the system is much easier.
• Cost of production is low owing to the high rate of production.
• In process inventories are low as production scheduling is simple and can be implemented with ease.

Question 20. Explain Product Design?

Answer :

Product design is a strategic decision as the image and profit earning capacity of a small firm depends largely on product design. Once the product to be produced is decided by the entrepreneur the next step is to prepare its design. Product design consists of form and function. The form designing includes decisions regarding its shape, size, color and appearance of the product. The functional design involves the working conditions of the product. Once a product is designed, it prevails for a long time therefore various factors are to be considered before designing it. These factors are listed below: -

• Standardization
• Reliability
• Maintainability
• Servicing
• Reproducibility
• Sustainability
• Product simplification
• Quality Commensuration with cost
• Product value
• Consumer quality
• Needs and tastes of consumers.