Integrated Production, Control Systems

The production control cycle is treated here as one connected system: the flow of production information, forecasting, aggregate planning, material requirements planning, monetary control and scheduling. Bedworth and Bailey set out the quantitative methods that computer-integrated manufacturing depends on, and give scheduling, a notoriously difficult subject, particularly thorough attention.

This edition was built around eleven companion programs for the IBM PC, covering growth forecasting, aggregate planning, material requirements planning, lot sizing and inventory control, and limited-resource scheduling, so that real problems could be worked through rather than simply read about. Clearly presented solutions, plenty of examples and a good stock of exercises make it a solid reference for industrial engineering students and operations specialists, and an absorbing record of how factory planning was being formalised in the late 1980s.