5.3 Tactical and operational planning

Difference between strategic and tactical kinds of planning

1. According to time: strategic planning is connected with the decisions the consequences of which will be felt throughout the long period, and tactical plans concretize and supplement strategic ones.

2. According to spheres of influence: strategic planning influences the enterprise activity deeper and more widely than tactical planning, which has the narrow direction.

3. According to strategic component: if strategic plans outline the mission of the enterprise activity and also important general means of this mission performance, tactical plans accurately define the whole sum-total of the practical means which are necessary for carrying of the planned purposes.

Tactical plans content. Tactical planning covers working out medium-term and short-term plans. These plans are interconnected: they have uniform methodology of working out and identical structure of sections.

Tactical plans contain the following basic sections.

1. Marketing activity (plans of marketing for basic products and the general plan for all enterprise production);

2. Industrial activity (output in natural and value terms; grounding the enterprise production program);

3. Research and development and experimental work (new technologies and products);

4. Labour, staff, social development of the staff (personnel, wages fund, productivity, working conditions and conditions of life);

5. Capital investments and capital construction (investments, building installation works, introduction of fixed assets);

6. Material and technical support (the need for material resources and sources of its satisfaction);

7. The organisation of manufacturing, labour and management (improvement of forms and methods, structural reorganisation);

8. Nature protection activity (actions concerning protection and rational use of natural resources);

9. Foreign economic activity (indicators of this activity, results of export and import transactions);

10. Expenditures, profit, profitability (prime cost of products and the whole volume of production, profit and profitability);

11. Financial activity (balance of incomes and expenditures, mutual relations with the budget, credit relations).

Operational planning is a closing link in system of the enterprise activity planning, the basic lever of current manufacture management; detailed working out plans of the enterprise and its subsections for short time intervals (a month, a shift).

Operational planning organically combines two directions of work:

- Scheduling (working out operational plans and manufacturing and output schedules);

- Production control (a system of work, which covers the continuous records management, the control and regulations of operational plans performance (production progress).

The major tasks of operational planning are as follows:

- Ensuring the industrial activity plan fulfilment in the planned terms under conditions of regular work of all enterprise subsections;

- Establishing the operating mode of the enterprise; this would provide full use of the equipment and personnel;

- Maximum reducing the production cycle duration and work-in-process volumes.

There exist the following kinds of operational planning.

Interplant operational planning is ensuring activity co-ordination and necessary industrial proportions between shops according to the sequence of technological processes (procurement, processing, and assembly) and functions of different shops (the producing departments, auxiliary, servicing). Its main task is the coordination of work pieces and blanks nomenclature, details and units, and also terms of transferring them from one shop to others.

Intrashop operational planning is working out planned schedules for industrial production sectors and the control of their performance, distribution of work between sectors and informing the personnel about these planned schedules, operational regulation of production processes.