CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1    BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Production Planning and Control are terms that though commonly used have witnessed a lot of changes both in meaning and scope in the past four years, for example, based on the extended view of production to include the tradition of all of production services both as discipline of study and as a profession can now be practiced in all organizations. As in other field of management, planning and control forms the primary function of the production management. It is for this reason that this research has decided to take a critical look into production planning and control as practical in beverage industrial sector of the Nigerian economy. This is informed by the variety of major product and beverage products in industry as exemplified by Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC), Kaduna.
Buffa (2002) defined production as the process by which goods and services are created. Production can be regarded as the central focus of any manufacturing concern. It is that stage where the real action takes place i.e. the transformation of raw materials (input) into finished product (output).
The Planning and Control operation are necessary because in every manufacturing unit there are people, machine and materials for production. There is the need to plan all expensive resources required for production in order to make effective use of them and maximize profit for the organization.
Modern production is complex hence both technologically related operation and administrative activities must therefore be planned carefully to make account of all the possible restructure, constraint and advantages. For planning to meet order at less cost, there must be production planning.
According to Mayer (2002), there is a logic behind the operation of the production process, it starts from the types of technology as well as the type of production in the particular manufacturing process.
Wild (2002) defined production as a managerial function that tends to design, plan what to produce, when to produce, where to produce and for whom to produce, the quantity, the quality to produce and for whom to produce. These function attempts to define the key decision model involved in production i.e. the long-term and the short term planning as well as identify the procedure and control in a cost effective way.
Apple (2002) defines production as the activity of transforming raw materials or components into finished product. However, the definition is clear that production essentially entails the transformation of raw materials into finished goods and services.
Production planning involve not only the types of operations to be used but the order of these operations as well as a time or duration the operation would take and how the plan should be laid out.