ABSTRACT
The selection and design of Production Planning and Control (PPC) systems has been a source of interest to both academics and industrialists [Prabhu (1983), Plenert and Best (1986), Schofield and Bonney (1981)] for many years. The nature of the problems inherent in these activities has evolved from decisions about which manual planning and control techniques to apply to a particular situation into the need for a series of decisions which today reflect the increased knowledge about the manufacturing environment, the influence which PPC systems can have on the performance of the manufacturing system and the range of new tools and technologies available [Hill (1993), Doumeingts (1991), Kochhar and McGarrie (1992)]. This paper presents the findings of a
benchmarking study into “best practice” at a sample of users of MRPII systems and then proposes a checklist of factors against which manufacturing managers can assess the effectiveness of current PPC systems, identify opportunities for improvement and monitor the implementation of changes to the PPC system. It is considered that the checklist presented here has the advantage of not being system-specific.
