Once a year, capital plans are reviewed for new products and adjustments to capacity for existing products. The decisions made during this planning step provides the available capacity and the basic structure of the supply chain. Sales and Operational Planning is performed once per month to monitor and adjust plans where incremental changes can be made. Changes to rail fleets, storage, contract capacity and major swings in raw material purchases will require three to five months. The decisions during this planning step provides narrower boundaries and guidance necessary to do the scheduling exercise.
Operational planning is another name for scheduling.
In the context of the previous planning steps, operational planning characterizes the conversion of a plan that can change, without penalty, to a schedule in which money will start to be spent. Converting a Plan to Committing Resources D efining the planning constants was not very important prior to this step. However, the objective must stay in clear focus. That objective is - a Quality schedule, so that everything comes together just at the right time. There is a real tradeoff between detail and accuracy.