Assignment 2 Design and Planning of Production 2022/2023 - Scheduling

Deadline: May 30th 2023 17.00

Team size: maximum of 2.

This assignment is based on a description of the planning and production situation at a

manufacturer of racks and displays for shops and warehouses, named Albatros. The
management of Albatros received this description, and now wants to know how their planning
processes can be improved.
Carefully read the description of the production and planning context and processes
outlined below. Then write an advisory report in which you report to the management of the
company your analysis of the planning processes. The report typically consists of 4-5 pages of
A4 (excluding tables, pictures, and references), but you are allowed to use more pages if you
wish. Keep in mind that you are writing this report for the management, your
recommendations are therefore key and should be presented in a clear and concise manner.
The advisory report includes your recommendations and how you arrived at. Address at least
the following in your report:

1. Depict the production and planning processes using BPMN. BPMN is a standard notation for
creating flowchart-like diagrams that represent business processes. It has some
resemblance to Value Stream Maps, but with better support for information and control
flows. It uses a set of symbols to represent different elements of a process such as tasks,
events, gateways, and flows. BPMN can model complex processes with many conditional
paths, parallel flows, and loops. It's often used to design new processes or to document
existing ones in a clear, standardized way that can be understood by both business and
technical stakeholders. BPMN focuses on the sequence and control flow of the process
steps. You can read more about BPMN at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Process_Model_and_Notation
and
http://yoann.nogues.free.fr/IMG/pdf/07-04_WP_Intro_to_BPMN_-_White-2.pdf

You can use the following BPMN elements:

- Activities: Activities represent work that is performed within the process. These could
be tasks (atomic activities) or subprocesses (compound activities).
Example: In a production process, activities might include assembling a product,
conducting a quality inspection, or packaging the product for shipment.
- Events: These are triggers that start, alter, or complete a process flow. There are
different types of events such as start, intermediate, and end events.
Example: In a manufacturing context, a start event could be the receipt of a new
customer order. An intermediate event could be the completion of a quality check. An
end event might be the shipment of the finished product to the customer.
- Gateways: Gateways are used to control the flow of the process. They determine the
diverging and converging of sequence flows based on conditions. There are several
types of gateways such as exclusive, inclusive, parallel, and complex.
Example: In a production planning process, an exclusive gateway could be used after
an activity like "Check raw material availability". If enough raw materials are available,
the process might proceed with "Schedule production"; if not, the process might divert
to "Order more materials".

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 - Sequence Flows: These are arrows that show the order of activities within the process.
In a manufacturing process, a sequence flow implies a physical flow, going from raw
material to the end product.
Example: In a manufacturing process, a sequence flow might indicate that after
"Assemble product" is completed, the next step is "Quality inspection".
- Message Flows: These represent the flow of information between two entities.
Example: A message flow could exist between the manufacturing department and the
inventory management system, sending a message such as "Request for raw
materials".
- Data Objects: These represent information that is produced or consumed by activities
within a process. Data objects are going through the system with message flows.
Example: In a manufacturing process, a data object might be the manufacturing
instructions that guide the assembly of a product.
- Pools and Lanes: Pools and lanes are used to represent the organizational structure. A
pool represents a participant in a process, and lanes are used to organize activities
within a pool according to who performs them.
Example: In a manufacturing process, one pool might represent the "Production
department", while lanes within that pool could represent different roles such as
"Assembly line worker", "Quality inspector", and "Packaging".

One of the challenging tasks in creating a BPMN is to choose a level of aggregation that makes
any issues visible. If the level of detail is too high or too low, the problems that need to be
worked on will not become visible or will be lost in information overload. It is your task to
choose a level that adequately reflects the problems in the case and makes the analysis easy to
understand.

2. Analyse the performance of the planning using the performance measurement framework
discussed in: “De Snoo, C., Van Wezel, W., & Jorna, R. J. (2011). An empirical investigation
of scheduling performance criteria. Journal of Operations Management, 29(3), 181-193”.

3. Use the analysis of the planning performance criteria to draw a fishbone diagram.

4. Propose a design in which the planning problems are solved. In the design, choose one
source problem (or a combination of related problems) from the fishbone diagram.
Describe your proposal in text, and draw a new BPMN for the affected production and
planning processes depicting your proposal. Make sure the differences between the old
and new situation are made clear.

Use the book and additional literature in your analysis and advice, as this is one of the
assessment criteria. If you do so, make sure to explicitly refer to the source, so we can indeed
reward your use of literature.

-- Description of Albatros --
The description of the processes at Albatros is organized as follows. Section 1 shortly describes
the background of processes in general, and outlines the approach used. Sections 2 and 3
consist respectively of a detailed description of the company and of the planning processes. In
the last section, section 4, different means and ways of communication and cooperation are
listed, including the interactions of actors during a typical day. We remark that we slightly
changed some general business characteristics to guarantee the anonymity of the company.

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1. Background and methodology
In describing the planning situation at Albatros, the focus has been on the activities of the
humans being involved in planning and scheduling activities. Production companies are often
faced with a high variety of demands, much complexity, and high uncertainty. Therefore, plans
and schedules are developed that serve as tools to guide decision making on the different
organization levels. Demand and supply of materials, products, machine and employee
capacity, are mutually adjusted by means of multiple related plans. All kinds of unexpected
events however invalidate released plans, resulting in the need for plan adaptation. Slack,
redundancy and local authority to adapt plans are insufficient because of the tight connectivity
of the plans. Although IT-tools like ERP and APS systems support information visibility, plan
adaptation and communication possibilities enormously, the humans remain responsible and
indispensable (MacCarthy and Wilson, 2001).
Often, planning and execution activities are separated and assigned to different
employees. Planners and schedulers are responsible for the development and maintenance of
feasible and efficient plans respectively schedules, whereas operators are involved in the
realization of these plans and schedules. It is usually assumed that operators follow the
prescription of the plan, having some freedom for adaptation in case of urgent matters. Plan
infeasibility is communicated to the planners who subsequently have to update the plan. This
task splitting leads to higher levels of specialization. However, splitting responsibilities and
authorities regarding work preparation (scheduling) and work execution (operation) is only
possible if good relations between the two levels exist. Operators frequently complain about
the incompetence of the planners because they do not take into account the actual situation
and possibilities of the shop floor. Reversely, planners are often frustrated about too self-
willed operators not following schedules, or lazy operators not communicating (suspected)
plan disturbances early. In short, efficient and well-functioning communication lines between
plan creators and plan executors are a valuable but vulnerable asset for companies.

Multiple research methods were used to describe the planning process, like interviews,
observation studies, questionnaires, document analyses, and participative field work. The
correctness of the described planning process was checked with several experts in the
company.

2. Detailed description of the company

Albatros is a producer of racks and displays for shops and warehouses and operates on a
dynamic and competitive international market. In 1896 the company was founded. During the
1960s, the company entered the financial exchange and stock markets. Attempts to win a
prominent position in foreign markets came to fruition in the 1980s. Currently, 140-200 client-
specific orders are processed each day. Most clients are big companies that have long-term
contracts with the company. Often, one big order for a complete building is followed by
irregular small orders for only a handful of racks or displays. The contracts contain agreements
regarding the quick and customized delivery of products for a period of around ten years.
Market demands are increasing, especially regarding product-mix flexibility, customization and
delivery dates. Total sales on a yearly basis are roughly predictable, but the demand per
product group per period is hard to predict and very heterogeneous. The constantly changing
product mix has the consequence for production that there is no fixed bottleneck: each
product generates a different workload per department.
Twenty-five sales agencies, within and outside the country, are responsible for the
procurement of orders and customer relationship management. In this way, the
manufacturing company does not have direct communication with the client. Formally, to

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discuss a change regarding the delivery date or product specifications, the sales agency has to
be contacted. In practice, the internal sales department, that is collecting all orders from the
agencies, realizes this client communication. External sales employees are only involved in
order acquisition. The internal sales department is called ‘ordering’. It is responsible for the
right translation of orders from the sales agencies into the ERP-system, especially in case of
non-standard client orders.
Over 30.000 product parts are purchased from a large number of suppliers. These materials
are subsequently used in three production departments: metal-working, finishing (i.e.
painting) and assembly. 250 shop floor operators are working in multiple shifts. Products
follow a fixed structure with a fixed pace rate. The standard lead-time of work-in-progress is
five days (fig. 1).

Figure 1. Primary process Albatros.

The metal working department consists of almost 40 work centres in which steel operations
are performed. Production orders have different routings. Both batch and lot-for-lot
production rules are applied, dependent on the number of orders and the available capacity.
Within the painting department, the half-products from the metal working department are
painted and powder-coated. Two powdering lines are available, one that is highly flexible but
not so efficient, and one that requests long cleaning and setup times but is suitable for large
batches. The assembly department consists of seven production lines. Purchased and
produced materials are assembled and packaged. Each production department has its own
planner who is responsible for both the mid-term and short-term production plans.
Distribution of end products is outsourced, but Albatros is involved in the planning of
delivery. The department ‘distribution planning’ deals with the planning of efficient domestic
and international transport routes. Delivery of products often includes some construction or
final assembly activities. Employees from the department ‘service planning’ are responsible for
the fitters’ schedules. Figure 2 provides an overview of all planning departments.

Figure 2. Planning departments Albatros.

Albatros uses the ERP-system Baan, complemented with several company-specific

applications. Each night, the system calculates production and purchasing demands based on

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MRP-calculations. The system’s output forms the basis for all detailed plans and schedules.
Figure 3 shows the basic structure of planning and execution at Albatros.
According to the management of Albatros, reliability of delivery is the most important
business performance objective. A special function has been created, the so-called
‘troubleshooter’, fulfilling the role of ‘order chaser’. He urges planners and operators to plan
and produce products with the earliest due date, ‘realizing’ a delivery reliability rate of more
than 95%. For the production departments efficiency is considered the most important
performance objective. Machine equipment and materials should be used as efficiently as
possible, requiring few and short setup times, and clustering of similar orders.

Figure 3. Production planning situation.

3. Detailed description of the planning

The planning function in an organization can be characterized by the elements shown in
figure 4 (De Snoo et al., 2007). This figure represents the key elements that are usually covered
when analysing and designing (parts of) an organization (Sorge, 2002):
1. the (organizational) environment (planning environment)
2. the work processes and activities (planning process).
3. the resulting products (plans)
4. the actors and their roles (planners)
5. the tools and facilities used (planning tools).
Below these elements are explained for Albatros in more detail.

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 Figure 4. Core elements for the analysis of the planning function in an organization.

Planning environment
The planning environment consists of all the elements that impact planning complexity and
performance. Generally, product, market or demand, and manufacturing process
characteristics are considered critical for the appropriateness of any manufacturing planning
and control method (Jonsson and Mattsson, 2003). Production planners are only one element
in the chain of people that deal with a specific client order. Different departments like sales,
purchasing, production, distribution, service and planning are involved in the processing of
orders from the client request to delivery of the end-product. Alignment of the processes
within this operational network (Wijngaard et al., 2006), but also of a substantial level of
common goal concerns (Nauta et al., 2002) are necessary to realize high business
performance. Next to the organizational structure, the company-specific manners and habits
to deal with uncertainty, autonomy, flexibility and coordination strongly impact the
requirements for planning organization design. Planning and scheduling are interconnected
with many functions and processes (McKay and Wiers, 2006).
To align sales and production at Albatros, every Monday morning a so-called ‘capacity
meeting’ takes place with the operations manager, the head of the departments production
planning and warehousing, the assembly planner, the material purchasing planner, the
customer support manager, the head of the department ordering and the account
coordinator. During this meeting backlogs in production, supplier delivery problems, special
orders, and performance realization are discussed. The main goals are to discuss critical issues
for the upcoming 4-6 weeks and to determine the capacity for the weeks to release (i.e. the
main constraints for order acceptance and production plans).
Albatros aims at a rapid delivery of a wide variety of products. Clients however are allowed
to change their orders after order acceptance and suppliers are allowed to delay the supply of
raw material. This results in a high number of rescheduling events complicating the planning
puzzle for the planners and stability at the shop floor.
Next to this, different performance criteria are used: production is judged on the criterion
of efficiency and machine utilization, whereas planning is judged on the criterion of delivery
reliability. This leads to a goal conflict in the interactions between planners and operators
regarding the prioritization of orders. The operators are formally free to determine the
sequence of orders within the boundaries of one day (conform the fixed one-day lead time per
department). Therefore, the operators choose a sequence taking machine setups, material
availability, and production easiness into account. However, because of changing orders and
rescheduling, the production schedules change. Moreover, to be able to realize overall high
delivery reliability, planners imply more constraints to the shop floor, for example by strictly
prescribing the production sequence. A lot of explanation and persuasion between planning
and production is the result. Planners complain about the bad ‘obedience’ of the production
operators, whereas the operators complain about the decreasing levels of freedom they have
in determining the final schedule by themselves.

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 Between sales and planning another conflict exists. Local sales agencies make agreements
with clients about delivery dates, before or without consulting Albatros about available
resources and realistic delivery times. Besides, the planners regularly discuss alternative
delivery dates with the client, neglecting the official procedures of communication via sales
agencies. Important cause of this adjustment problem is related to the planning structure:
sales, order acceptance, production and service plans are developed by different departments,
whereas coordination of the interferences between them has not been organized properly.

Because of the organizational interconnectivity of planning and scheduling, all kinds of

events within the planning environment influence both the feasibility of the plans as well as
the activities and their priority of the planners. Four different causes of order changes
occasionally resulting in plan adaptations can be distinguished.
1. Rush orders
Rush orders are all orders that are entered by a sales centre with a shorter delivery
time than the standard (i.e. 4-8 weeks). Figure 5 shows the percentage of rush orders
for a number of months (compared to the total number of orders per month) from the
viewpoint of the production planners. Rush orders can be divided into three
categories:
a. Mock-ups. A mock-up is an example of racks or displays that is set-up at the
customer, so the customer can decide whether to order this product from
Albatros. These mock-ups usually need to be delivered on a very short term
(within 10 days). If an order has the label ‘mock-up’ everyone within Albatros will
do whatever possible in order to make sure the mock-up will be delivered on time,
because everyone knows that based on the delivery of the mock-up, the customer
will decide whether Albatros or a competitor will get the big order.
b. Complaint orders. Customers complaining about deliveries have to be satisfied
within ten days with repaired or new products.
c. ‘Normal’ orders. Some orders for one reason or another have to be delivered with
a shorter than standard delivery time.
2. Order change
Sales centres or customers regularly change orders. Changes can be divided into six
types: addition of order-line, cancellation of order-line, change of article number,
change of quantity, change of delivery address, change of delivery date/time.
3. Internal disruptions
Interruptions in the production process could cause an order change, as a delay of
delivery date, adaptation of the material, because of out-of-stock problems.
4. Supply side (Supplier)
If a supplier is not able to deliver a material on time, delivery dates could be delayed.
Sometimes, suppliers are not able to deliver a certain material or half-product. Order
specifications have to be renegotiated with the client.
For each of these four situations, the timing of notification determines the number of
planners and departments to be involved in the problem-solving process. The earlier a
(potential) problem-causing event is solved, the less planners have to be involved and the less
plans have to be reconsidered. The release dates for the different plans and the actual state of
execution highly restrict the opportunities for rescheduling.

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 Percentages rush after assmbly/delivery plan
2-4 weeks before delivery <2 weeks before delivery
35%

30%

25%

20%
%

15%

10%

5%

0%
12

10
11
12

10
11
12
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
2004 2005 2006 2007
Year/Month

Figure 5. Percentage of rush orders after the release of the assembly plan.

Planning process and plans

The internal sales office receives client orders from the twenty-five sales agencies. Standard
orders are automatically processed and imported in the ERP-system, whereas specific orders
require manual registration of material requirements, lead times, et cetera. Each night the
ERP-system calculates all material needs resulting in a basic plan for each production
department. The assembly planner uses the information about accepted orders to start with
the assembly plan. This plan consists of the assignment of assembly work orders to specific
days. Because of the fixed production pace rate (see figure 1), from this sub-plan,
requirements per day for the other production departments are known. The assembly planner
equalizes the assembly workload over the days of the week. Sometimes, delivery constraints
like international transports are also taken into account. When the workload is equalized, the
assembly plan is released. After the nightly run of the ERP-system, the next planner can start
with the planning for his department (i.e. painting).
The only task for the production department planners is to cluster orders on certain dates
and to assign them to work cells or production lines. The planning process is serially organized:
in a chain like a train with compartments, the three production planners subsequently
‘optimize’ the MRP-output for their department. Due to the fixed agreement about lead times
per production department (i.e. one day), planners are allowed to change the sequence of
production within that day. However, in practice tighter connections exist between the
production orders. Released plans often have to be adapted, because they have become
infeasible. As described earlier, four causes for plan adaptation could be distinguished:
supplier problems, problems on the shop floor, new client orders, and changed client orders.
Each category of problems potentially affects the production plans. Therefore, the production
planners have to consider probable plan invalidating events timely. In short, the planners
formally create plans following the backward planning logic (from assembly to purchasing), but
actually they face a forward moving reality as well (due to material supplier problems, machine
failures, product losses, etc.).

The so-called ‘troubleshooter’ plays a central role in the rescheduling process, continuously
pushing the planners and production foremen to realize high delivery reliability. Scheduling

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and rescheduling decisions have to be reconsidered, adapted and communicated. Because a
plan change often impacts the plans of others, planners have to cooperate to find feasible
solutions. Coordination between the planners is not formally organized, i.e. there are no
formal rules about which planners should be involved in what way at which moment.
Coordination mostly occurs via shouting or phone calls in an ad-hoc manner. Procedures about
when and how information about order changes, machine failures or delivery postponement
should be shared are not accurate. Because of the large physical distance between the
planning and production department, communication between planners and shop floor
operators occurs mostly via phone or computer system. Missing product parts, machine
failures, etc. have formally to be communicated via the database software Access; such events
are in practice communicated by means of phone calls.
After assembly, one day is reserved for a final check for quality and completeness of the
products. After this day, a full day is available for loading the products into the trucks. At the
end of that day, the trucks will depart to transport the products to the clients. In practise,
these days function as a buffer to solve all problems due to internal tardiness problems (cf. fig.
1). Figure 6 shows the percentage of orders that is still in progress (i.e., not ready for control
and loading) at different points in time for six arbitrary days. Table 1 displays the raw data
including the total number of orders for each due date. Two days before the due date, 30 to 60
percent of the orders is not proceeding according to plan. Although the troubleshooter seems
to be quite successful in yet realizing over 90% delivery reliability, the figure clearly indicates
the high amount of rushing and chasing.

70%

60%
Percentage tardy orders

9 May
50%
10 May
40% 11 May
30% 14 May
15 May
20%
16 May
10%

0%
7.30h 14.00h 7.30h 16.00h

control day loading day

Figure 6. Percentage of ‘tardy’ orders at different points before delivery.

control day loading day

Due Date total # orders 7.30h 14.00h 7.30h 16.00h
9 May 135 41% 23% 12% 2,2%
10 May 143 39% 18% 15% 6,3%
11 May 139 27% 23% 17% 3,6%
14 May 93 62% 39% 28% 7,5%
15 May 218 29% 16% 12% 4,1%
16 May 143 40% 24% 13% 0,7%
Table 1. Percentage of orders not ready for delivery.

Planners

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 Planning is usually a formal fulltime task of one or more employees. The human planner is
indispensable in many planning situations (MacCarthy and Wilson, 2001). Jackson et al. (2004)
discern three types of tasks of planners: (a) formal tasks which are the official tasks as
specified by the organization, (b) maintenance tasks that keep the necessary information up-
to-date, and (c) compensation tasks, that occur when the planner must solve conflicting goals.
Planners perform these tasks in different roles: the interpersonal role in which interaction with
other personnel is expressed, the informational role in which the planner is the “information
hub”, and the decisional role, where the planner makes the actual plan (Jackson et al., 2004)
(MacCarthy, 2006).
At Albatros, five employees are involved in the development and ‘maintenance’ of capacity
and production plans for the three production departments metal working, painting and
assembling. Each department has its own planner: the metal working planner, the painting
planner, and the assembly planner. Their tasks are mainly formal tasks to be realized by
playing a decisional role. The ‘troubleshooter’ deals with all immediate problems regarding
products with a nearing due date. He clearly performs maintenance and compensation tasks,
and plays the informational and interpersonal roles. The fifth planner is involved in inventory
control activities, both for the raw material inventories as well as the pipeline inventory, i.e.
the work-in-progress. Next to the planners, there are two employees who support the
planners with administrative tasks. The team leader of the planners is not involved in planning
related tasks, but is concerned with overall planning improvement programs, and the
supervision of the planners and supporting employees.
Most of the planners have a background as production operator and have not followed
any educational program in planning or scheduling.

Tools
A range of support tools can be used by the planner during the development of the plan,
like plan boards, spreadsheets and advanced planning systems (APS). Albatros uses Baan as a
database and planning system. Recently, a newer version of the Baan software has been
implemented to improve planning flexibility. However, the implementation resulted into a
failure: planners as well as operators lost control and delivery reliability rates decreased
dramatically. Main cause seemed to be the many plan changes during the day as a
consequence of the new optimization algorithms in Baan, resulting in a ‘nervous’ system.
Currently, additional software packages are implemented incrementally to solve the problem,
but the computer system is still being experienced as inflexible and limiting further
improvements. For instance, consequences of alternative planning decisions can be presented
or communicated by the system, but this functionality is still too limited. Also, the planning
system does not support collaboration between planners. As a result, e-mail and MS Office
tools (Excel, Access, and Word) are used for communication between planners and operators,
for instance to announce machine failures or material losses.

4. Communication and cooperation mechanisms

In the current situation there are several mechanisms and tools in use to support the
coordination of exceptions. In this section we first briefly describe the general mechanisms and
tools, then we will present the daily interactions between actors involved in planning in more
detail.

General mechanisms and tools:

• The planners are each morning confronted with a list of rescheduling messages from
the ERP-system. The messages require manual adaptation of the production plans, e.g.
by adaptation of capacity restrictions, usage of safety stocks, or firm planned orders.

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 • All shop floor operators have access to a Deficit Announcement System (DAS) to report
working orders that cannot be processed due to missing materials, products or tools.
The planners handle these announcements during the day. The troubleshooter is
concerned with all shortages regarding orders that have to be loaded on that day.
• A small percentage of orders could not be loaded on the loading day, because parts
are still missing or in progress. These orders are listed on the so-called ‘Deficit List’.
Two times a day this Deficit list is send around. For each order, a new due date is set.
The list is used by the planners to reschedule the tardy orders; production managers
use the list to decide about personnel availability and resource utilization.
• Rush orders and changes of orders that are already released to the shop floor, are
listed on a so-called ‘Small Freight List’. This list is used by the production and
distribution planners in order to know which orders are added or changed.
• Each order that needs to be rescheduled due to supplier problems is listed by the
material supply planner on the so-called ‘Re-plan List’. On this list all orders affected by
the delay are noted with the old delivery date and the new, earliest possible delivery
date. Based on this list, the production planners adapt the production plans and
inform the shop floor. The department ordering informs the sales agencies and clients
in case delivery dates could no longer be met. However, it often occurs that the
ordering or sales agencies do not accept the delivery postponement. In such cases,
management is involved to decide about the adaptation of capacity constraints (e.g. by
means of overtime work).
• Next to these mechanisms, much information is shared and cooperation takes place by
means of informal communication: face-to-face, by phone or e-mail. Below we
elaborate on this coordination mechanism, by describing a regular workday in more
detail.

Daily interactions
To understand the activities of employees involved in planning and scheduling activities, a
regular working day has been chosen during which these employees registered all their
planning-related interactions. The planners were asked to fill out the interaction questionnaire
irrespective of the interaction partner, the production foremen had to register only the
interactions with other foremen or with a planner (i.e., all conversations with operators,
forklift drivers, expeditors, etc. were neglected). Apart from the point of time of the
interaction and the two participants (name + department), the questions dealt with the
subject, reason, duration, information (a)symmetry, goal and interest congruence between the
participants, importance, and satisfaction of the interaction.
Twenty-one employees participated. The number and the people participating per
department slightly differ (table 2).

Department # participants
Production planning 5
Metal-working 6
Painting 6
Assembly 4
Table 2. Number of collected questionnaires.

Interactions
Table 3 shows the number of registered interactions per function. The first figure indicates
the number of interactions with a planner or production foreman. The second figure between
brackets indicates the total number of interactions registered by this function.

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 Function description # interactions
Planner department metal working 20 (45)
Planner department painting 25 (27)
Planner department assembly / trouble-shooter 16 (53)
Planner inventory control 17 (22)
Planner manager and team leader 6 (12)
Administrative assistant for planners 9 (10)
Shop floor manager department metal-working 5 (5)
Shop floor foremen department metal-working 25 (37)
Shop floor manager department painting n/a
Shop floor foremen department painting 19 (46)
Shop floor manager department assembly 6 (14)
Shop floor foremen department assembly 12 (17)
Table 3. Number of registered interactions per function.

As can be seen in the table, the variance in the number of reported interactions per
employee is enormous. Note that the shop floor manager painting was absent during the day
of the measurement.

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Medium
Planners preferred to communicate by phone, because then they could remain sitting
behind the computer screen, having better insights into their plans (fig. 7). ERP system
dependability is more important than face-to-face cooperation.

by phone

via email

face-to-face

shouting

others /
unknown

Figure 7. Communication medium, measurement N=203.

Reasons for and necessity of interactions

Participants indicated the main reason for each interaction from a list of five options. Table
4 below shows the results. It is clear that the majority of interactions deal with information
dispersion. Although some plan disturbing events took place during the day - providing the
opportunity for collaborative rescheduling - the number of interactions characterized as
‘collaboration’ is rather low. The cause may be that to reach the shopfloor, the planners have
to cross the big warehouse.

Reasons measurement
Providing information 31%
Requesting information 46%
Collaboration 1%
Negotiation 16%
Check / evaluation 3%
Other 3%
Total 100%

Table 4. Frequencies reasons (measurement N=198).

Participants were asked to indicate the necessity of the interaction for the own work and to
indicate the necessity of the interaction for the work of the interaction partner (the latter
being a perceived necessity). According to the participants, almost all interactions are
important (>90%) or even very important (> 70%) for the own work. Interactions are also
important for the other (>85% important).

Insight into information of interaction partner and coherence of viewpoint and interests
Four options could be ticked regarding the extent to which the respondent had insight into
the information of the interaction partner. Table 5 shows the results.

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 measurement
Frequency Percentage
Fully 97 45,1%
Almost fully 60 27,9%
A bit 34 15,8%
None 24 11,2%
Total 215 100%

Table 5. Insight into information of interaction partner.

It was also asked whether the respondent and his interaction partner have a similar view on
the situation and similar interests regarding the situation. For 77% of the interactions a similar
view existed. Interests were also highly coherent: 72% of the interactions were reported as
interactions in which both partners had (almost) fully similar interest.

Satisfaction about process and outcome of interaction

Participants indicated the extent to which they were satisfied about the process and the
outcome of the interaction. Generally, participants are satisfied to very satisfied about both
the process and the outcome (fig.8).

Figure 8. Satisfaction about process and outcome of the interaction.

left: How satisfied are you about the process of the interaction? (N=219).
right: How satisfied are you about the outcome of the interaction? (N=212).

References

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De Snoo, C. (2007), "How to analyze the planning function in a company? Description and application of
a process-oriented framework", Graduate School of Business and Economics - University of
Groningen, Groningen.
De Snoo, C., Wortmann, H., Gaalman, G., and Van Wezel, W. (2007), "Decomposition of the production
planning function implies coordination of planners", in Proceedings of the 14th EurOMA Conference,
Ankara, Turkey.
De Snoo, C., Van Wezel, W., Wortmann, H. and Gaalman, G. (2008), "Organizational design of
collaborative rescheduling processes", International Journal of Operations & Production
Management, Under review.
Jackson, S., MacCarthy, B.L. and Wilson, J.R. (2004), "A New Model of Scheduling in Manufacturing:
Tasks, Roles, and Monitoring", Human Factors, Vol.46, No.3, pp. 533-550.
Jonsson, P. and Mattsson, S.-A. (2003), "The implications of fit between planning environments and
manufacturing planning and control methods", International Journal of Operations & Production
Management, Vol.23, No.8, pp. 872-900.
MacCarthy, B.L. (2006), "Organizational, Systems and Human Issues in Production Planning, Scheduling
and Control", in Herrmann, J.W., (Ed.), Handbook of Production Scheduling, Springer, New York, pp.
59-60.
MacCarthy, B.L. and Wilson, J.R. (2001), Human Performance in Planning and Scheduling, Taylor &
Francis, London.
McKay, K.N. and Wiers, V.C.S. (2006), "The Organizational Interconnectivity of Planning and
Scheduling", in Van Wezel, W., Jorna, R.J. and Meystel, A.M., (Eds.), Planning in Intelligent
Systems: Aspects, Motivations, and Methods, Wiley, New York, pp. 177-201.
Nauta, A., De Dreu, C.K.W. and Van der Vaart, J.T. (2002), "Social value orientation, organizational goal
concerns and interdepartmental problem-solving behavior", Journal of Organizational Behavior,
Vol.23, No.2, pp. 199-213.
Sorge, A. (2002), Organization, Thomson Learning, London.
Van Wezel, W.M.C. (2001), Tasks, hierarchies, and flexibility: planning in food processing industries,
PhD-thesis, Labyrint Publication, Capelle a/d IJssel.

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Grading rubrics
The following rubrics are used when assessing the assignment. Each rubric is scored as lacking,
insufficient, sufficient, or good.

Introduction
Clear and concise introduction, including background and purpose of the report, and method
used

BPMN
Production processes and activities
Planning processes and activities

Planning Performance
Description of planning performance, based on performance measurement framework
Description of problems using fishbone diagram

Redesign
Proposals to improve planning at Albatros
Coherence between performance, problems, and proposals
Adapted production processes and activities
Adapted planning processes and activities

Conclusion
Clear and concise conclusion

General feedback
Full management report, including introduction, analysis, advice and conclusions
Use of book
Use of additional literature
Layout of the report
Spelling and grammar

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