A production planning and scheduling framework for smaller manufacturing enterprises

Earlier research involved the development of a planning and control system the key needs of smaller manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) (A.P. Muhlemann et al., 1984; 1985 1986; 1990). A contributory factor to the success of this was the development of a general model of the production process which underpinned the database design. The paper reports a number of additional stages in this work, where the basic system is being developed further to cover, in a more user friendly manner the scheduling capabilities of the system. After reviewing work completed on establishing user requirements in the area of scheduling, and some of the concepts which have been used to underpin the development, the paper goes on to describe how the system will be constructed. Areas for further work are identified