Manufacturing Operations Management and Production Control Training Course

Course overview

Production targets, customer due dates and cost plans are often set separately from the constraints that determine whether a factory can actually deliver: available machine hours, labour skills, material availability, changeover time, maintenance windows and work-in-progress capacity. Manufacturing supervisors and operations managers need a reliable control system that converts demand into feasible production plans, highlights deviations early and drives corrective action without creating expediting, excess inventory or unstable schedules.

This five-day Manufacturing Operations Management and Production Control Training Course teaches participants to design and manage that system. Participants work through demand management, sales and operations planning (S&OP), master production scheduling, material requirements planning (MRP), capacity requirements planning (CRP), shop-floor dispatching and performance control. They learn to calculate takt time, capacity, OEE, schedule adherence, inventory turns and manufacturing lead time; use finite-capacity thinking to identify bottlenecks; and apply visual controls, escalation rules and daily management routines to protect delivery performance.

Teaching combines instructor-led explanation with factory-based cases, planning calculations, production-control simulations and group workshops. Participants use Microsoft Excel planning models, interpret ERP/MRP outputs and apply ISO 22400 manufacturing KPI definitions. By the end of the course, each participant produces a practical production control pack for a selected production area: a demand-to-capacity plan, KPI dashboard, shortage and exception-management process, and 90-day improvement action plan that can be reviewed with their manager.

The course is designed for manufacturing professionals who already work with production plans, schedules, inventory, capacity or shop-floor performance and now need stronger control methods across the end-to-end operation.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Build a demand-to-capacity plan using forecast, order, inventory and available-capacity data
• Calculate takt time, effective capacity, utilisation and OEE for a production process
• Create a master production schedule with time fences, planning horizons and scheduling rules
• Interpret MRP exception messages to prioritise material shortages, rescheduling actions and purchase requirements
• Apply capacity requirements planning to identify bottlenecks and test load-levelling options
• Design a shop-floor dispatching board using priority rules, WIP limits and escalation triggers
• Construct an ISO 22400-aligned production KPI dashboard for delivery, quality, cost and asset performance
• Produce a 90-day production-control improvement plan with owners, measures and review cadence

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Production Managers — who must convert customer demand into stable, achievable output plans
• Operations Managers — who coordinate capacity, inventory, labour and delivery performance across manufacturing areas
• Production Planners and Schedulers — who need to create feasible schedules and manage daily plan changes
• Manufacturing Supervisors — who control work release, WIP, shift output and escalation on the shop floor
• Supply Chain Managers — who need to align material availability and supplier performance with production requirements
• Continuous Improvement Engineers — who need operational data to target bottlenecks, losses and flow constraints

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience in a manufacturing, assembly, processing or production-support environment and understand basic shop-floor terms such as routing, bill of materials, work order, inventory, lead time, capacity and downtime. Familiarity with the production-planning screens or reports in an ERP system is helpful, as is confidence using simple Microsoft Excel formulas and charts. Participants should bring examples of their own production measures or planning challenges where possible. Prior formal study of lean, Six Sigma, APICS, advanced statistics or specialist scheduling software is not required.

Training methodology

The instructor uses a connected manufacturing case throughout the week, moving from forecast demand and inventory records to a master schedule, material plan, capacity check and shop-floor control routine. Short technical briefings are followed by Excel-based calculations, ERP/MRP report interpretation, group decision exercises and facilitated review of trade-offs between delivery, cost, inventory and utilisation. Participants diagnose schedule instability, shortages and bottlenecks in realistic scenarios. The final workshop converts the methods into an application plan and production-control pack for the participant’s own operating context.

Course outline

Day 1: Manufacturing operations and demand-to-plan control

• Operations strategy, order winners and manufacturing performance priorities
• End-to-end production planning and control architecture
• Demand types, forecast error and customer-order management
• Sales and operations planning inputs and decision horizons
• Takt time calculation from customer demand and net available time
• Capacity concepts: design, effective, demonstrated and available capacity
• ISO 22400 measures for throughput, availability and production performance

Workshop: Participants map a case-factory planning process and calculate takt time, effective capacity and the initial demand-capacity gap.

Day 2: Master production scheduling and material planning

• Aggregate production plans and product-family planning
• Master production schedule structure and planning time buckets
• Time fences, frozen zones and schedule-change governance
• Available-to-promise and capable-to-promise calculations
• Bills of materials, product structures and dependent demand
• MRP logic: gross requirements, netting, lot sizing and offsets
• MRP exception messages and material-shortage prioritisation

Workshop: Participants create a master production schedule and run an MRP-style netting exercise to produce an exception-action list.

Day 3: Capacity management and constraint-based scheduling

• Routings, work centres and standard-time data
• Rough-cut capacity planning for critical resources
• Capacity requirements planning and load-versus-capacity reports
• Finite and infinite loading approaches
• Bottleneck identification using constraint and queue analysis
• Load levelling through lot splitting, alternate routing and overtime scenarios
• Sequencing rules: FIFO, earliest due date, critical ratio and shortest processing time

Workshop: Participants analyse a loaded work-centre schedule, identify the constraint and recommend a feasible capacity and sequencing response.

Day 4: Shop-floor control and operational performance management

• Work-order release rules and WIP control limits
• Dispatch lists, visual production boards and daily accountability meetings
• Andon escalation and response-time standards
• OEE calculation: availability, performance and quality losses
• Schedule adherence, plan attainment and on-time-in-full measures
• Manufacturing lead time, cycle time and inventory-turn analysis
• Root-cause analysis using Pareto charts, five whys and loss trees

Workshop: Participants build a daily production-control board and KPI dashboard from shift data, then conduct a simulated escalation meeting.

Day 5: Integrated production control and implementation planning

• Daily, weekly and monthly production-control operating rhythms
• Roles and decision rights across planning, procurement, maintenance and production
• ERP data quality controls for inventory, routings, BOMs and lead times
• Microsoft Excel models for capacity, schedule adherence and shortage reporting
• Risk registers for supplier disruption, equipment failure and demand volatility
• Production-control maturity assessment and priority-gap analysis
• Ninety-day implementation planning with measures, owners and review gates

Workshop: Participants assemble and present a production-control pack containing a demand-capacity plan, KPI dashboard, exception process and 90-day action plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Project, ISO 22400, ISA-95

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions