ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a specific focus on feed inventory management in order to illustrate the challenges to Production and Operations Management (POM) that exist in pastoral farming and the methods that New Zealand farmers use to overcome them. It describes the tactical management processes used by pastoral-based livestock farmers and compares with the literature, both normative and descriptive. The chapter discusses the planning processes used by farmers. The product of farmers' planning processes, the plan, and its components: goals, predictive schedule of events, targets, and contingency plans are compared with other reported research. Aspects of the control process that are compared with the literature include the monitoring process, decision point recognition, diagnosis, and control response selection. The chapter highlights the importance farmers place on control relative to planning, again an area that has tended to receive limited attention in the literature. It identifies important areas of a farmer's production management that should be evaluated.
