Transfer of Production Planning and Scheduling from Staff to Production Personnel in a Complex Maintenance Company

Abstract

In decentralized production organizations based on target-oriented production teams, production scheduling is often transferred from staff to the production teams, which may influence how the work tasks are carried out. The objectives of this case study was to gain understanding of why and how the production scheduling process was changed in a company that introduced production teams with increased responsibility for scheduling. A second objective was to analyze the demands that were made on the production scheduling system from the production teams to be able to fulfill their work requirements. Conclusions drawn were that a change in production scheduling was necessary if the production teams were to fulfill the demands put on them and that production through the decentralization was empowered to demand such change. The change of production scheduling included development of manual scheduling sheets, which proved to be successful in terms of meeting the production teams' needs for reliable production data and visualized production status.