APICS Certified Production Inventory Management (CPIM_Part2)

Content / Syllabus

I. Master Planning of Resources 

This includes principles and techniques of demand management, sales and operations planning, master scheduling, and distribution planning. It includes forecasting, order servicing, demand shaping, customer relationship management, and distribution network and replenishment. Also included is the integration between the sales and operations plan, production plan, and master production schedule.

• Demand Management: Strategic and business planning is closely related to the management of demand, including forecasting and managing the customer interface.
• Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP): Sales and operations planning (S&OP) concepts and techniques are used to link strategic goals to operations and coordinate the various planning efforts of the functional areas, including operations, sales, sourcing, product development, marketing, and finance in a variety of business environments.
• Master Scheduling: Master scheduling is the process of translating higher-level aggregate plans into feasible schedules that operations and suppliers can execute.

II. Detailed Scheduling and Planning

This includes principles and techniques of inventory management, material requirements planning, capacity requirements planning, and procurement and supplier planning. Recognizing the importance of supply chain management, this subject area also covers deployment of supply chain strategies related to scheduling, planning, and sourcing. This supports the strategies and objectives established by the company, as constrained by lead time, cost, equipment, personnel, sustainability considerations, or other constraints. This encompasses requirements to bridge the master planning with the execution and control subject areas.

• Inventory Management: Inventory management principles, policies, and techniques impact many other decisions throughout the organization, including stocking levels, order quantities, safety stocks, handling and storage requirements, and financial management.

• Planning Material Requirements to Support the Master Schedule: Planning material requirements driven by the master production schedule (MPS), including material requirements planning (MRP), deals with dependent demand parts and interrelationships that require planning at any given time. It also includes independent demand planning for service parts, matching supply with demand, and managing demand at aggregate and disaggregate levels.
• Planning Operations to Support Priority Plan: Capacity management encompasses planning, establishing, measuring, monitoring, and adjusting levels of capacity to execute the master schedule and related materials plan. It addresses the balancing of the material plans with available internal and external resources and supporting activities, including constraint management, line and flow balancing, and variability and capacity in a transient state.

III. Execution and Control of Operations

This encompasses the principles and techniques necessary to execute, control, and manage operations, and participate in design decisions. This subject area provides feedback about how good plans are being executed, as well as providing information for customers and suppliers about the status of services and products in process. The importance and emphasis of these approaches are relative to the operation’s environment, the labor environment, the physical organization of the facility, and the effectiveness of management and employees.

• Execution of Operations: The execution of operations includes understanding the scheduling processes that translate plans into operational activities. This includes applying methods of authorizing and releasing work, and the management of resources required to accomplish the work. All execution activities rely on an understanding of the decisions made about the organizational environment, strategies, and objectives.
• Control of Operations: Control of operations encompasses the ongoing review and management of operational results in comparison to the established near-term plan, followed by analysis and application of any corrective action required to align performance with the plan. Control includes the principles and techniques to accomplish the plan using both internal and external resources.
• Quality, Communication, and Continuous Improvement: Management defines the quality and continuous improvement goals of the organization, and uses meaningful communication techniques to educate others and bring about those goals.

IV. Strategic Management of Resources

This includes higher-level thinking on strategic planning and implementation of operations. This requires an understanding of how market requirements and strategic position of the organization drive the resources and processes of an organization. This includes how operational strategies are developed and implemented, change management and risk implications.

• Understanding Business Environment and Developing Corporate Strategy: Operations strategy must be integrated with the corporate strategy of the firm, reflecting the external environment, as well as organizational priorities and philosophies. The operations strategy development process must capture and assimilate that information to provide context for alignment with corporate strategy. Corporate strategy development must consider business environmental factors.
• Developing Operations Strategy: The operations strategy development process must align with the business strategy and reflect the analysis of the business environment. This includes the processes of identifying, evaluating, and choosing among alternatives in the context of the business strategy, and understanding the significance of the various factors in developing the operations strategy.
• Implementing Operations Strategy: Various strategic leadership activities, leadership roles, and responsibilities are necessary for the successful implementation of the operations strategy.