50 Books Challenge: Book # 4: Practical Production Control, a Survival Guide for Planners and Schedulers by Kenneth Mckay and Vincent Wiers

The 50 books challenge is an internet challenge that I adopted which is simply finish reading 50 books in a year or roughly 1 book per week. However, I’m lagging behind….

The operative word here is Practical and indeed the book is a candid structured lecture or more like a pep talk of do’s and don’ts of Production Control. For the clueless, Production Control is akin to Sales in it’s relationship to Marketing, i.e., Sales being the tactical, executive arm of the policy making Marketing. Production Control’s relationship to Operations Management is similar but don’t mistake Production Control to be the totality of Operations Management though. The book is absent on analytical Frameworks save for one in the second to the last chapter. Also, it hardly mentioned any production control techniques, i.e., no formulas, no models, the stuffs. Instead, the book is replete with common sense experiences of the authors, something you pay good money to listen in talks/ in consultancy but nothing deep though. As for the writing style of the author, it’s straight forward, with a generous serving of humor which is something rare in a technical book. Technical at times with its jargons but not that difficult to understand. Overall, I felt disappointed with the book in that you’ll not get something useful out of it save of course if you’re into implementing APS (Advance Production Scheduling) and MRP, in which case, you’ll might get some noteworthy tips (practically more than half of the book is devoted to that aspect). If you’re aim is to learn to control production from this book, better be disappointed.