Operations Scheduling: Input & Output Control – input | output| production chain
Operations Scheduling: Input & Output Control
Controlling What You Get
Let’s say that you were getting ready to make a batch of cupcakes. You’ve got a whole bag of flour, a dozen eggs, and another bag of sugar. Not only do you have to have all the ingredients, but you also have to have them assembled in the right order.
You work and work on the cupcakes and then, when you’re done, you only end up with two measly cupcakes.
You’d be pretty disappointed, wouldn’t you? In fact, you’re probably wondering where all those ingredients and all that energy went.
In this respect, baking is a lot like running a business. You have to pay for the inputs and the time, so you want to make sure that you’re getting the outputs that you need. In this lesson, we’re going to look at how operations scheduling, or the practice of managing the resources, timing, and production of a product line, helps companies increase their efficiency.
Inputs and Outputs
When you bake cupcakes – and hopefully you’ll end up with more than two when you do – you have ingredients and results. Your ingredients are the eggs, flour, sugar, and whatever else your grandmother’s secret recipe calls for, while the results are the cupcakes. As a manufacturer of something, you’ve got the same things, but they go by different names. Inputs are the ingredients to a process. They not only include the raw materials but also the actions that have to be performed to transform the raw materials. Mixing and baking are as much inputs to making cupcakes as flour and eggs.
Outputs, on the other hand, are the results of a process. In this example, your cupcakes were the output. If you were running a company, whatever it is that you sell to your customers is your output.
The Production Chain
So how do you go from flour and eggs to cupcakes? Simple: you follow the recipe. Likewise, when you go from raw materials to finished goods, you follow the production chain. The production chain is the description of the timing and amounts for inputs and processes to produce an output. For your cupcakes, the production chain may call for mixing the dry ingredients, adding the wet ingredients, then baking. Notice that all of these have to be done in a specific order. You can’t add the eggs after you bake, nor can you sift flour after you’ve added the wet ingredients. Likewise, if you’re making a product, you have to follow the steps in order. You can’t paint a piece of metal before you have molded it to be the frame of a car.
What Affects Performance?
Two major sets of factors can really affect performance. The first of these is logistics. We won’t go into it too much here, but it’s hard to make cupcakes if you haven’t been to the store to pick up the ingredients.
The second are the different centers of production. The gateway center is the opening stage of production. If a slowdown happens here, it will affect the whole of your cupcake-making operation. If your grandmother calls while you’re making the batter, chances are you’ll have to slow down to talk to her and won’t be able to complete it all in time.
Meanwhile, further along, you have downstream centers that are those steps that follow the initial step. If your dog runs up and tracks mud in the house, you may be inclined to stop working on the cupcakes and clean up the mud. While it has no effect on the earlier production, it slows everything down from that point on.
That means you could face a backlog. A backlog exists when there is an inefficiency in the system. Let’s say you were baking two sets of cupcakes. Having an oven full of half-cooked cupcakes while another two dozen sit on the countertop is a backlog.
Lesson Summary
Let’s review. Just like baking cupcakes, companies have to follow operations scheduling, which is managing the resources, timing, and production of a product line. This operations scheduling has both inputs, the ingredients to a process, and outputs, the results of a process. The production chain is the timing and amounts for inputs and processes to produce an output.
Meanwhile, the production chain is made up of the gateway center, or the opening stage of production and a number of downstream centers, or those steps that follow the initial step. Downstream centers can have a backlog, when there is an inefficiency in the system.