Managing production essentially means managing the 6Ms: Man, Money, Machine, Material, Method and Market. Here is what is expected in managing them:
Man
• The right manpower plays a crucial role in the success of any production activity.
• The company should prepare comprehensive manpower requirement plan as per its production schedule and should arrange for the manpower.
• The manpower plan should make proactive arrangements for lean periods when the manpower shortage is common.
• The managers must ensure that the available manpower is productively occupied. For this, every person should know what his task is and how to perform it.
• Proper training must be a part of the manpower development.
• The employees need motivation also. Most of the production activities are monotonous. We must make efforts to keep them motivated in their job.
• The employees must be provided reasonable salary or wages, as per the industry standards.
• We should take care of their safety at work and invest in their training and development.
• We should periodically study every process of work or time effort measurement and confirm manpower allocation and productivity measures.
Money
• Money must be managed properly for uninterrupted production.
• We must make enough investment in machine, material and manpower.
• Appropriate cost constraints must be established to control machine, material and manpower costs.
• We must recalculate the cost periodically to factor the changed prices of inputs. This may result into revised sales prices also.
• The focus of the company must be an optimum utilization of the assets.
• The financial impact of the production activity must be reviewed regularly.
• Tight cost control is a must for long term sustainability of any business.
Machine
• We must provide the right equipment for production.
• This equipment must be maintained properly.
• Machine breakdown must be minimized by timely preventive maintenance and timely repair work.
Material
• Consistent availability of the required material must be ensured.
• Ensure that there are no breakdowns because of the material unavailability.
• We must set processes for timely procurement of the right quality and quantity of the raw material.
• Our raw material market may go into seasonal shortages or other challenges. We must safeguard ourselves by keeping some buffer stock or by establishing alternative supply channels to avoid disruption of supply.
• We must invest in strong vendor relationships to ensure the regular material supply.
• Design appropriate inventory control processes for the timely replenishment of stock.
Method
• Methods refer to the processes of the company. Refer to the discussion on Process Design under Production Planning covered earlier in this chapter.
• The company must ensure establishment of SOP document for each process as a part of the Operations Manual of the company.
• The company must observe the implementation of its processes carefully.
• At the same time, it must keep refining the processes, if there is a need.
• The employees must be trained for all the processes and must be expected to work as per the processes, to minimize variation and dependence on individuals.
Market
A business exists to satisfy some needs of the customers through its products or services. The role of production is to ensure that the company produces the products that actually meet the customer’s expectations in terms of quality, cost and time.
• A consistent quality builds the trust for the brand in the customer’s mind.
• Cost efficiency increases competitiveness in the marketplace.
• Timely delivery builds our reputation of reliability.
(Expert advice to GROW your business wherever you are, whenever you want.
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