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Planning Interview Questions and Answers

Planning is a key part of the industrial engineer's role and involves setting goals, monitoring mechanisms, and controlling outcomes. It encompasses consideration of technological, organizational, economic and other factors to optimize production processes. Effective planning requires analyzing operations and resources to make practical decisions and timely priorities. It is a powerful tool that ensures minimal waste and optimum resource use when done well. However, many companies lack effective planning cultures, tools, and models, resulting in weak strategies that do not achieve their intended outcomes. Planning should also focus on harnessing the labor resource to develop a fully devoted workforce that can implement other plans and ultimately define product quality.

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Willy K. Ng'etich
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4K views2 pages

Planning Interview Questions and Answers

Planning is a key part of the industrial engineer's role and involves setting goals, monitoring mechanisms, and controlling outcomes. It encompasses consideration of technological, organizational, economic and other factors to optimize production processes. Effective planning requires analyzing operations and resources to make practical decisions and timely priorities. It is a powerful tool that ensures minimal waste and optimum resource use when done well. However, many companies lack effective planning cultures, tools, and models, resulting in weak strategies that do not achieve their intended outcomes. Planning should also focus on harnessing the labor resource to develop a fully devoted workforce that can implement other plans and ultimately define product quality.

Uploaded by

Willy K. Ng'etich
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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As an Industrial Engineer planning is one of my fortes.

Planning takes several phases that encompass past, present and future data predictions
and outcomes.
These phases detail; one, setting goals and objectives that align with the company
strategy, two, setting up and facilitating models, mechanisms, and activities that will
achieve the laid out objectives, and thirdly monitoring and controlling the mechanisms to
ensure success of the desired outcomes.
Simply a planner essentially is an individual who uses the(se) resources around him
taking into consideration technological, organizational, commercial, economic, financial,
and efficiency and optimization factors in production and operation systems and
processes, by setting goals and objectives towards attaining the tasks at hand.

As it is said "Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you." Patrick Dixon

Planning in one word is 'control'.


A good plan can take you far, not only activity wise but financially, by taking charge of
your present.
Planning is like a telescope that sees into the future possibilities of opportunity, the past
its flaws and opportunity ‘niche’ effectively allowing you to make better judgment calls
and decisions, and the present in allowing you to take charge of your resources and
possible gains.

Planning is a powerful tool that when used effectively ensures minimal waste, optimum
use of resources, and fast response times to e.g. the needs of the customer and the
company as a whole.

Planning, Planning and more Planning.


The lack of if non-existent effective planning culture, tools and models.

My past experiences in the various capacities I have held, have seen companies battling
with waste management, resource management, communication difficulties, and the list
goes on. Of those that do practice planning, will be found lacking in effective planning
models and formulation techniques developing poor, weak planning strategies that lack in
their intended purpose.

This led me to one conclusion, and that is, if one takes the time to sit down and map out
an effective strategic and logical workable path towards a desired outcome taking into
consideration the pros and cons of each facet of the process, allowing for logical analysis
of the operations and resources at hand, in order to make practical conclusions on the
decisions and steps to take, allows one to arrive at a far much better conclusion and thus
timely priorities where to focus and what to do, giving you an edge in the market.

Exploitation of the Labour resource.


In the past posts I have been exposed to, all/most company resources seem to have been
tackled in terms of exploiting their opportunities, with the labour resource being side
lined.
I am schooled from the Japanese way of thinking, founders of the industrial engineers
lean productivity, theory of constraints, the goal and kaizen way etc..., thus in this light, I
believe, that one of the important resources of a business unit especially a service driven
and orientated unit as such, is its labour resource.
Harnessing and developing this resource into a fully devoted, ownership driven, and
excellence oriented work force unit, will ultimately bring all well planned, carefully
formulated and effectively driven planning to fruition.
The last line of defense in production of quality goods and services is your labour staff at
the shop floor. They ultimately define whether you make a quality (inherent) product or
not.

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