STUDENTS' CORNER - 63

After ensuring optimum inventory which, we leant, avoids over-stocking as well as under-stocking, we move on to the next objective of Production Planning: Coordinating activities of Departments.

Production planning includes the very important task of coordinating the activities of all the departments of the company.  Coordination implies, of course, there should be more than one to work with and to work along.

For a business to continue to thrive, all its departments must work in coordination never losing sight of the aim of the business: profit without which no business worth the name can exist even for a short span of time. All the efforts of all the departments of the company, marketing department, production department, inventory department, finance department--- all must work in coordinating pattern so that all the efforts of all the people of all the department move on an integrated meaningful path .  In other words, they must consciously be aware of the fact that their activities, all of them, move towards a common goal of the company. And the chief task of the manager of the company is to see to it that nobody’s effort goes waste and astray.

Coordination is a continuous and a pervasive factor, continuous in the sense that business is a continuous activity of great concern and pervasive in the sense that all the departments and all the people of all the department at various levels of organization must coordinate with one another. Otherwise, business will be negatively affected.

Coordination is everybody’s responsibility; it means that responsibility of achieving coordination does not begin and end with the top level authorities only; it is shared by mangers working at different levels of the organization.  Even the last level employee also has something to contribute to the company’s goal. Top level managers coordinate all the plans and policies of the organization; middle level managers coordinate departmental activities and the lower level managers coordinate the activities of all the workers. In other words, through interconnection between the departments, the entire business organization functions like one organic living being.

Above all, coordination is a very conscious activity in the sense that it cannot be forgotten even for a minute. If one section of the organization fails to conform to the practice of coordination, the result will be chaos and confusion, the factors that will damage the business goal very severely.

Coordination is the essence of management, the living breath of it. As the breath keeps the human being alive, it keeps the management afloat in profitability. The virtue of coordination is it helps achieve organizational objective with least friction and conflict among the employees of the organization.  From the peon of the organization to the President, coordination is the basic thread that connects one with all and all with one another like the thread of the garland that carries different flowers on it giving it a shape and form that matter. It means there will be harmony and quality in the activities of the organization.

So, production planning requires coordination of all the departments so that the business does not waver on its path but sticks to the only path of survival and sustenance through profit.

(i) Helps in achieving organisational objectives with minimum of conflict.

(ii) Provides the required quality, timing, amount and sequence of efforts.

(iii) Brings harmony in efforts of different departments and individuals.