Production Planning and Control System for Dirt Bikes USA Report

This report provides a detailed analysis of production planning and control systems for Dirt Bikes USA. It explores the costs and benefits of implementing production planning software, considering factors such as staff, servers, software, and data storage. The report evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of owning versus outsourcing these components, including cloud-based solutions. It also examines the reliability, ease of use, and control aspects of different software options, and offers recommendations for future infrastructure needs, including the potential implementation of an ERP system. The conclusion suggests a hybrid approach: owning the software while outsourcing server and data storage to ensure reliability and agility. The report serves as a guide for Dirt Bikes USA to optimize its production processes and resource allocation.

Running head: PRODUCTION CONTROL AND PLANNING
Production Control and Planning
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Implementation and Cost of infrastructure investment..........................................................2
The advantages and disadvantages of owning versus outsourcing........................................3
Staff....................................................................................................................................3
Servers................................................................................................................................3
Software.............................................................................................................................4
Data Storage.......................................................................................................................4
Reliability and ease of use versus control..............................................................................4
Combinations of outsourcing for the components.................................................................5
Future infrastructure needs.....................................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
Reference....................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
In any business, the seamless flow of manufacturing unit can only be effective with
the implementation of production planning and control systems. This helps in addressing to
the problems regarding low productivity, inventory management and utilization of resources.
This production planning is further followed by planning of workplace and scheduling of the
operations (Baldea & Harjunkoski, 2014). This process is done during the transformation of
the ideas into final products. Time-frame management of the required production is
maintained by scheduling. The following report would include the production planning and
control system for Dirt Bikes USA, as they are keen on implementing such software
including 25 members of the manufacturing staff. The report would include cost of
implementation, advantages and disadvantages of owning and outsourcing depending on the
four components of manufacturing, the ease of use and control system and the future
infrastructure needs.
Implementation and Cost of infrastructure investment
Production planning depends on the factors of manufacturing system that includes
scheduling of the period of production, dispatch of products, inspection and quality
management, inventory and supply management, and inventory management. Implementing a
production planning software would ensure the production team about the detailed
information regarding a proposed manufactured product (Branke et al., 2016). This detailed
information provides the production target information, quality management and cost savings
of the production. Implementing a manual infrastructure into online services naturally raises
the production cost; however, it cuts down the employee needs into supervising the proposed
tasks. Therefore, the idea to implement the production planning and control would help in

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maintaining the production cost so that the project does not go over budget since less
employees are required to supervise the production.
The advantages and disadvantages of owning versus outsourcing
Dirt Bikes USA wants to implement the production planning into software, however,
is indecisive about owning software or outsourcing it. There are several advantages and
disadvantages of owning software and outsourcing it. This is based on the four components
of manufacturing a product. These are as follows:
Staff
Workforce is the most essential factor of any organization. As per reports, Dirt Bikes
USA has limited staff, but all of them provide supreme quality of productivity in the
organization. In most cases, it could be found that outsourcing is perceived negatively since it
means replacing of existing workforce (He, Zhang & Li, 2014). However, in Dirt Bikes USA,
employees are eager to implement software being outsourced into the manufacturing unit.
This is because the employees have an idea that owning the manufacturing unit by a manual
process is less beneficial than outsourcing software for the ease of the production task.
Servers
The most important aspect of software outsourcing or software owning is the server
system of the organization. In case of Dirt Bikes USA, both the founders were riders as well
as engineers by profession. Therefore, there is a high probability of the organization being
technologically sound. The companies willing to offer their services online through software
has a higher probability of implementing cloud computing as a server. The companies like
Amazon and Salesforce.com conducts its entire services online with no physical existence of
their production. However, it is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service or IaaS domain (Stadtler,

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2015). With Dirt Bikes USA, the most convenient and profitable would be outsourcing the
software with cloud as a server.
Software
The biggest profit an organization can acquire is by in-house or ownership of
software. Any developer in the home country would cost one-third than the outsourced
developer (Pheng, 2018). Moreover, outsourced software cannot be customized as per the
organization’s production. In this case, the Dirt Bikes would not suffice any outsourced
software since its production includes time constrains and inventory system of engine parts
that may or may not be available. If the entire software is customized, then it can be made
according to the manufacturing needs for the Dirt Bikes.
Data Storage
In the same way the owned development of software allows a user to customize
according to requirements, data storage system can also be customized according to the needs
of the organization (Stadtler, 2015). According to the inventory system of Dirt Bikes USA,
the national and international sales have been increased since 2010 and that too, drastically.
The inventory needs to have huge data storage since Dirt Bikes USA manufactures every
product by them.
Therefore, if developing an owned site is considered, then the organization should
consider the cloud as the data storage system.
Reliability and ease of use versus control
Production control focuses more on regulating the inventory management, organizing
production schedule and optimal utilization of the resources as well as the production
process. For a robust production control, the Dirt Bike USA production control software
needs to ensure a smooth production process while maintaining quality. Since, the

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organization has 25 production staff, their work schedule and planning should also be
maintained through the software.
If all these criteria were met, the software would be reliable enough to guide the user
access through various databases containing the inventory and the work schedule structures
(Stadtler, 2015). The software would be interactive enough and should be able to offer ease
of access through various devices.
Combinations of outsourcing for the components
After studying through the Dirt Bikes USA organization structure, it is clear that to
implement production supervision software, it will be better to implement ownership of the
software but the server should be employed from the cloud to make the software reliable. The
more server space is used up; the software would become slower to access the internet.
Reliable software should have seamless connectivity to the internet (Stadtler, 2015).
Therefore, the storage and server should be outsourced and the rest of the software structure
should be developed locally within the organization.
Future infrastructure needs
With the ever-changing world in the cyberspace, it is necessary that software should be
flexible enough to fulfil the needs of customer. Dirt Bikes should also be implementing ERP
or Enterprise Resource Planning in the future so that the organization can add billing and
accounting for the manufactured products as well (Krenczyk & Jagodzinski, 2015). For this
reason, it would be necessary for internet servers to host Dirt Bike USA’s website and e-
commerce services.

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Conclusion
It can be concluded from the following discussion that Dirt Bikes USA indeed needs to
implement software for the production planning, quality control and scheduling of tasks for
the 25 manufacturing staff. However, after going through the entire case scenario, it could be
stated that the software should be owned with local developers, and the server and data
storage should be outsourced from the cloud. This would provide the software its reliability
and agility. In future, however, the Dirt Bikes USA organization could think of implementing
ERP system to provide flexibility of the software in maintaining the production and inventory
balance.

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Reference
Baldea, M., & Harjunkoski, I. (2014). Integrated production scheduling and process control:
A systematic review. Computers & Chemical Engineering, 71, 377-390.
Branke, J., Nguyen, S., Pickardt, C. W., & Zhang, M. (2016). Automated design of
production scheduling heuristics: A review. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary
Computation, 20(1), 110-124.
He, N., Zhang, D. Z., & Li, Q. (2014). Agent-based hierarchical production planning and
scheduling in make-to-order manufacturing system. International Journal of
Production Economics, 149, 117-130.
Krenczyk, D., & Jagodzinski, M. (2015). ERP, APS and simulation systems integration to
support production planning and scheduling. In 10th International Conference on Soft
Computing Models in Industrial and Environmental Applications (pp. 451-461).
Springer, Cham.
Pheng, L. S. (2018). Project Time Management. In Project Management for the Built
Environment (pp. 79-96). Springer, Singapore.
Stadtler, H. (2015). Production planning and scheduling. In Supply Chain Management and
Advanced Planning (pp. 195-211). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.