Production activity control—a key aspect of production control

Abstract

This paper reviews the role of Production Activity Control (PAC) in modern production and inventory management systems. It argues that the PAC system is fundamental to the realisation of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) at the operational or shop floor level. It presents an architecture for PAC and suggests that to date research has overemphasised one element of PAC, namely the scheduling function, and further has considered scheduling as an isolated problem without reference to the overall PAC system requirement. This, along with the tendency to consider scheduling as a combinatorial problem to be solved using mathematically elegant techniques accounts for the ‘theory-practice gap’ in scheduling. The paper concludes with some suggestions for further research effort in the PAC area.