LOOKAHEAD PLANNING: THE MISSING LINK IN PRODUCTION CONTROL

Lookahead planning is one of the decision functions that constitute production control systems (Melles and Wamelink 1993). It stands between overall project coordination schedules and short term crew-level commitments, screening out scheduled activities that "should" but cannot be done and improving the success rate of completing the tasks assigned in weekly and daily plans. When measured against such objectives, current industry lookahead planning is poorly performed. A case study is presented to illustrate current procedures and performance, and suggestions are offered for improvement. Preface