Within
supply chain management
In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) is the management of the flow of goods and services including all processes that transform raw materials into final products between businesses and locations. This can include the movement and sto ...
and
manufacturing
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a ...
, 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. With
inventory control and
quality control, production control is one of the key functions of
operations management.
Overview
Production control is the activity of monitoring and controlling a large physical facility or physically dispersed service. It is a "set of actions and decision taken during
production to regulate output and obtain reasonable assurance that the specification will be met."
[S. N. Ghosh (ed.) ''Cement and Concrete Science & Technology.'' 1991. p. 419] The
American Production and Inventory Control Society, nowadays APICS, defined production control in 1959 as:
:''Production control is the task of predicting, planning and scheduling work, taking into account manpower, materials availability and other capacity restrictions, and cost so as to achieve proper quality and quantity at the time it is needed and then following up the schedule to see that the plan is carried out, using whatever systems have proven satisfactory for the purpose.''
Production planning and control in larger factories is often run from a production planning department run by production controllers and a production control manager
Production monitoringand control of larger operations is often run from a central space, called a
control room or
operations room or operations control center (OCC).
The emerging area of Project Production Management (PPM), based on viewing project activities as a production system, adopts the same notion of production control to take steps to regulate the behavior of a production system where in this case the production system is a capital project, rather than a physical facility or a physically dispersed service.
Production control is to be contrasted with project controls. As explained,
["Contrasting Project Production Control with Project Controls," R.J. Arbulu, H-J. Choo, M. Williams, Proc. International Conference on Innovative Production and Construction (IPC 2016), 3–5 October 2016, Darwin, Australia] project controls have developed to become centralized functions to track project progress and identify deviations from plan and to forecast future progress, using metrics rooted in accounting principles.
Types

One type of production control is the control of manufacturing operations.
*
Production planning and control of the when and where.
* Production control and
supply chain management
In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) is the management of the flow of goods and services including all processes that transform raw materials into final products between businesses and locations. This can include the movement and sto ...
Management of real-time operational in specific fields.
* Production control in the
television studio in a
production control room
The production control room (PCR) or studio control room (SCR) is the place in a television studio in which the composition of the outgoing program takes place.
The production control room is occasionally also called an SCR or a gallerythe latt ...
*
Master control in television studio
* Production control in
spaceflight
Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in o ...
in a Mission Operations Control Room
Communist countries had a central production control institute, where the agricultural and industrial production for the whole nation was planned and controlled.
In Customer Care environments production control is known as Workforce Management (WFM). Centralized Workforce Management teams are often called Command Center, Mission Control or WFM Shared Production Centers.
Related types of control in organizations
Production control is just one of multiple types of control in organizations. Most commons other types are:
* ''
Management control,'' one of the managerial functions like planning, organizing, staffing and directing. It is an important function because it helps to check the errors and to take the corrective action so that deviation from standards are minimized and stated goals of the organization are achieved in a desired manner.
* ''
Inventory control,'' the supervision of supply, storage and accessibility of items in order to ensure an adequate supply without excessive oversupply.
* ''
Quality control,'' the process by which entities review the
quality of all factors involved in production.
See also
*
Control (management)
Control is a function of management which helps to check errors in order to take corrective actions. This is done to minimize deviation from standards and ensure that the stated goals of the organization are achieved in a desired manner.
Accordi ...
*
Industrial engineering
Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information an ...
*
Manufacturing process management
*
Materials management
*
Operations management
*
Production engineering
Manufacturing engineering or production engineering is a branch of professional engineering that shares many common concepts and ideas with other fields of engineering such as mechanical, chemical, electrical, and industrial engineering.
Manufa ...
*
Project production management
Project production management (PPM) is the application of operations managementA Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Fifth Edition, Project Management Institute
Sec 1.5.1.1, p13
http://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/foundational ...
*
Time book
A time book is a mostly outdated accounting record, that registered the hours worked by employees in a certain organization in a certain period. These records usually contain names of employees, type of work, hours worked, and sometimes wages pai ...
References
Further reading
* Bedworth, David D., and James E. Bailey. ''Integrated production control systems: management, analysis, design.'' John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1999.
* Eilon, Samuel. ''Elements of production planning and control.'' Macmillan, 1962.
* Groover, Mikell P. ''Automation, production systems, and computer-integrated manufacturing.'' Prentice Hall Press, 2007.
* Johnson, Lynwood A., and Douglas C. Montgomery. ''Operations research in production planning, scheduling, and inventory control.'' Vol. 6. New York: Wiley, 1974.
*
C.E. Knoeppel.
Graphic production control'' New York, The Engineering magazine company, 1920
*
Koontz, Harold. "A preliminary statement of principles of planning and control." ''Academy of Management Journal'' 1.1 (1958): 45-61.
* Sipper, Daniel, and Robert L. Bulfin. ''Production: planning, control, and integration. McGraw-Hill Science, Engineering & Mathematics,'' 1997.
External links
* {{commonscat-inline
Control engineering
Production and manufacturing