Archive for: December 2009

As part of their developmental process, woodworkers should identify alternative opportunities but also to analyse these formally and evaluate them. This depends crucially on data availability. This has important implications for some of the other functions within the organisation, which will be responsible for collecting this data. A challenge here might be that while these other areas also require data for their own role in the evaluation process, they might be needed a different format from that required by productions/operations for its role.

It is important that all decision making on new commercial opportunities be based on the firmest …

Every woodworking company should produce a hierarchy of plans to enable it to fulfill its corporate purpose. These plans differ from each other in the level of detail at which they operate. Detail is in itself a reflection of the time-span covered by the plan. The largest time span is exhibited by the overall company policy. Consistent with this but spanning a shorter period of time is the marketing forecast which identifies and quantifies the products or services to be provided over the foreseeable future.

The group within the organisation responsible for examining the resource implications of this forecast …

In an ideal situation for a woodworking company, computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) operations involves the creation and design of new products using computer technology, the conversion of the designs into operational instructions and the actual production of finished products using the instructions.

The main structure of CIM is derived from computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM). CAD hardware and software capabilities have progressed rapidly in recent years, enabling woodworkers to create design drawings and specifications without a drawing board and with a high level of precision. Using CAD, products and their components can be created, their …

One of the most powerful tools for planning and control available to a woodworker is a budget, which properly prepared and used has all the advantages of an explicitly designed control system. Since most activities can be measured in financial terms, a financial budget can assist in displaying all the activities of an operating unit in a common language.

The preparation of a budget must begin with a forecast of intended activity, and it is quite likely that the first forecast is modified several times before being finalized. Given a forecast an operations manager can use it as a …