An Analogue Equipment for Use in Production Planning

Many planning problems may be more efficiently resolved by an interaction of man and machine than by either alone. This paper considers an analogue equipment built to assist the production planning of a small number of products which share common labour and machine resources. It deals with up to four products and six production periods at a time. The stock levels which would result at the end of each period with a given forecast demand pattern and a given labour pattern are shown on an array of current meters. This rapid display of the stock position enables the operator to assess many more production plans in a given time than previous manual methods could allow. It also permits rapid modifications to be made to a plan with knowledge of the likely consequences. This is a simple and effective approach to a problem which is difficult to treat analytically.