ABSTRACT
Operations planning is the overall planning activity which determines the work and resources needed to undertake a project, execute a contact or order or provide a service. In planning operations processes, several factors are involved – tasks, timing, responsibilities, risks, opportunities, resources, constraints, dependencies and sequence. Tools often used in operations planning are Gantt charts and PERT charts. Continued operation of the process should generate further records that confirm that the process is functioning properly. For planning outputs to be suitable for the organization's operations they need to match the input requirements of the processes they feed. A lot of the effort put into operations planning goes into determining resources, and therefore if the internal or external situation changes the resources may be insufficient or in the wrong place and thus jeopardize success. Any planned change to a project, contract or order should be passed through the same process as produced the initial operational plans.
