The author does not intend to explain to the Reader the meaning and purpose of dealing with production logistics. He has already done so once, about ten years ago. Repeating these arguments seems redundant in times when industry-specific and domain-specific logistics are multiplying in the literature like rabbits in a clover field. Following the guidelines of the Polish Accreditation Committee, we teach students supply logistics, production logistics, and distribution logistics separately. We devote an average of thirty hours to each of these subjects. Representatives of practice claim that a fourth subject would also be useful – “enterprise logistics,” which would explain to the student the relationships between the functioning of different areas of logistics in an enterprise. The dynamic development of the service sector, in turn, indicates that, following in the footsteps of the Americans, we should also deal with service logistics as a separate area of knowledge. The alternative is that in a moment it will develop into air tourism logistics, coach tourism logistics, and bicycle tourism logistics. Concluding this brief introduction with tips for those who are still looking for an area they can deal with in logistics, the Author of this article proceeds to present its genesis.
This article was created as a result of extensive literature studies. Their goal was to identify how the perception of the subject and scope of production logistics has evolved over time. They were intended to lead to a list of problems that, according to most publications, form the thematic area of interest for production logistics. The results obtained through the analysis are presented in the further part of this article.
Most of the analyzed publications, over 60% of a group of more than 100 books and articles from different periods, identify the subject of interest of production logistics directly or indirectly with the area that in older publications is referred to as “production control” or “production flow control.” In English-language publications, terms such as “production and inventory management” (PIM), “production control,” “production organisation,” and “materials management” are used.
The scope of problems identified with this area changes over time. It includes a set of activities organizing the full cycle of material movement, starting from their ordering and delivery, through direct production control and work-in-progress inventory control, to the delivery of finished products to the warehouse and their distribution to the customer. This area also includes the issue of production planning at the enterprise level – planning the production of final products. Over time, this issue becomes independent, moving into the field of planning. Production planning and control of its course are presented in older publications as a coherent problem area with clearly defined boundaries and a simple, transparent structure. It was possible to assign methods and techniques for solving them to the issues belonging to this area without much difficulty. Over time, however, a series of events occurs that disrupts this comfortable image, both from the point of view of theory and practice. The event of undoubtedly the greatest importance was the development of IT support for production control. It led to a permanent, it seems, separation of production control issues on the one hand into “manual” control – carried out using traditional methods and techniques that show little susceptibility to computerization, and on the other hand into IT-supported control. Numerous publications (about 30%) emphasize the breakthrough importance of the creation of the materials requirements planning (MRP) method. Another significant event was learning about the practical achievements of the Japanese in the field of production control.
The course of events described above led to the isolation of an area of problems that are the subject of interest of production logistics. It extends from the sphere of supply, through production, to distribution in a manufacturing enterprise. We can assign a specific, relatively coherent set of methods and techniques of action to this area. This set can in turn be divided into:
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methods and techniques widely using IT support
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methods and techniques using IT support only to a very limited extent.
With some simplification, we can say that the first group corresponds to solutions that are referred to in the literature as the “push” principle. The second group, in turn, corresponds to solutions that the literature defines as the “pull” principle.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 4/2011.