Objectives of the Aggregate planning

1. To minimize the investments in the various inventories.
2. To minimize the total cost over the planning horizon.
3. To maximize the customer service.
4. To minimize the changes in the workforce levels.
5. To minimize the changes in the production rates.
6. To maximize the utilization of the plant and the various equipments.

Introduction and meaning
Aggregate planning can be defined as the process involving the development, analyzation and the maintenance of a preliminary and approximate schedule of the overall operations that take place or have to take place in an organization. It is actually an operational activity involving an aggregate plan, which would guide the production process. This plan is made in advance of about 3 to 18 months and this plan plays a very critical role in providing an idea to the management about the quantity of the materials and the other resources that are to be procured and at what time of the operation all these are required.

An aggregate plan also consists of the targeted sales forecasts, production levels, inventory levels, customer backlogs etc. In this type of planning, the word ‘aggregate’ is used because the planning at this level includes all the resources in the aggregate. The schedule used in the aggregate planning plays a very critical and an essential role in providing the satisfaction to the demand forecast at a minimum cost.

Aggregate planning serves as the basic structure for the future short – range type planning and this type of planning can be categorized as follows –

1. Production plan –
• Also called as the manufacturing aggregate plan.
• Is a managerial statement of the period – by – period production rates, work – force levels etc.

2. Staffing plan –
• Also called as the service aggregate plan.
• Is a managerial statement of the period – by – period staff sizes and the labor – related capacities, given customer requirements and the capacity limitations.

Introduction
JIT can be defined as a philosophy which came into existence in the early 1970’s and for the first time it was developed in Toyota manufacturing plants under Taiichi Ohno. So it can be said that JIT is a Japanese philosophy.

According to Taiichi Ohno, waste is anything other than minimum amount of equipment, materials, parts and working time absolutely essential for the production. So waste can be defined as anything that provides no value to the operation,here JIT plays a very crucial and essential role.

JIT helps in eliminating or at least minimizing the various wasteful activities like moving work around, loading,unloading, carrying, storing, stocking etc. and hence allows the employees and the whole organization to keep a look on and concentrate on the various activities that provide value to the company.
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Introduction to Six Sigma
In today’s competitive world – there is no room for any type of error, everyone wants quick and efficient access to information, products and services – so it has become very important and mandatory to bring some critical changes, in the ways by which a company conducts or carries its various business activities. The company should make it a point to delight their customers by fulfilling their expectations. To help this cause, six sigma plays a very critical role as it lays a lot of emphasis on “Quality must become a part of the culture”

Theory behind six sigma
Six sigma was pioneered by Bill Smith at Motorola in 1986 – in the beginning six sigma was just considered as “a metric for measuring defects and improving the quality”, but now six sigma has spread its wings in all the directions and has grown beyond just controlling the defects. Six sigma is now a registered service mark and a trademark of Motorola, Inc.
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Variations in Gantt charts (Load charts)
Gantt charts are used with a lot of variations in order to prepare load charts. Indicating the load by numerals is one of the methods. Load charts are generally required for knowing the accumulated load at a given time for a given machine – a load chart also specifies the work which is to be carried out in each section or each department of the company, during the period under review. During the preparation of the load chart, one must be careful about the following –

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