At the top of the flowchart is business plan and forecasts. The business plan and forecasts developed by top managers provide guidance for long-term operations plans.

Next in order is to determine the long-range operations plan. The planning activities fall into five categories: capacity, location, layout, quality, and methods planning.

Next in flow, come operation schedules. Once managers and their teams have determined the operations plans, they develop timetables for implementing the plans. This includes the master production schedule, detailed schedules, staff schedule, and project schedule.

This is followed by operations control. Once long-range plans have been put into action and schedules have been drawn up, operations control requires managers ...

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