Definition
Manufacturing planning refers to the future design of manufacturing. As the link between design and actual production and assembly, it encompasses all one-off measures to be taken in the run-up to a production process. Production planning thus determines what is to be manufactured, how and with what.
It can be subdivided into work system planning as the planning of entire factories via production lines down to individual workstations and workflow planning as the planning of processes and production steps from production preparation via work and requirements planning down to the production and procurement of operating resources.