Reengineering the production planning process in the food industry

This paper addresses managerial process reengineering and in particular the reengineering of the production planning process. The reengineered process highlights planning options to avoid the process imbalance and loss of production potential that can follow innovation in a facility that is fully committed to JIT production. The study was motivated by production problems following product innovation within the food industry but the reengineering conclusions and procedures are applicable to all similarly structured industries. An example based on data from a snack food manufacturing company illustrates the reengineered procedure for a plant that is typical of the food processing industry.