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Introduction: In previous articles, we discussed the challenges in production management faced by small and medium-sized private enterprises, issues that many people working in factory management can relate to. We often find that production management in companies is very challenging; this is evident in the low on-time delivery rate of orders, as well as in the fact that production plans and tasks are never completed on time. However, when we meet to discuss and analyze the problems, it seems that every department has some responsibility, yet at the same time no department seems to bear any responsibility, because all departments are working hard, but the results remain unsatisfactory. What’s the reason? The foundation of production management lies in our work plan. Western management theory identifies five functions of management: planning, directing, organizing, coordinating, and controlling. Planning comes first; production management should start with breaking down production tasks and clarifying the responsibilities of each department. Many companies face management problems due to the failure to \"break down\" tasks into more specific components; unclear task assignments, production plans, and departmental responsibilities lead to an inability to define who is accountable for what. In companies, the practice of everyone sharing equally leads to serious problems such as shifting blame and passing responsibility off on one another. How can we break down tasks effectively? We mainly start with the following key points: 1. Overall management of orders. An order serves as the link between the customer and the enterprise. Most customer complaints and grievances stem from improper order handling—such as delays in delivery, or situations where the produced products fail to meet customer requirements due to inaccurate or incomplete order information. Many companies do not treat order entry as a key aspect to be controlled within factory production management, which leads to incomplete order information, unclear customer requirements, inadequate product packaging details, and vague timelines for responses from the technical, quality, and production departments. All of these issues have a significant impact on subsequent production stages. Therefore, production management must first ensure proper control over orders, which is specifically divided into: (1) control of order-related documents. When the business department receives an order, it first checks the number of orders and determines whether they are regular orders or new orders. For non-standard orders, it is also necessary to confirm various aspects such as product parameters, technical requirements, process requirements, quality standards, and packaging requirements. When encountering problems, business departments should proactively communicate and confirm details with various departments such as the Technology Department, Production Department, and Quality Department. In particular, packaging requirements are an issue that business departments tend to overlook; it is common in companies for products to be produced without the packaging method yet being determined. (2) Control of order review. Once the business department confirms the order details, it must submit the order to the PMC department (Production Material Control). The PMC department then organizes a \"Order Review Meeting\" with relevant departments such as the technical department, production department, quality control department, warehouse department, and R&D department. At the meeting, it was determined whether all the necessary information for this order was complete; the relevant departments clarified the requirements regarding manufacturing processes, quality standards, delivery deadlines, etc., and prepared an \"Order Review Form\". Attendees are required to sign and confirm on the “Order Review Form”. After the “Order Review Form” is signed and confirmed, it is archived by the PMC department. If the company has an ERP information management system, the sales department needs to enter this order into the system. (3) Control of order changes. When there are changes to a customer order regarding quantity, processing methods, packaging requirements, delivery dates, etc., a written notice of change must be issued by the relevant department, and such changes can only be implemented after being approved and signed by the appropriate supervisors. In the process of providing consulting services to enterprises, the author has observed that there are frequent instances of arbitrary changes to orders within these companies. No one conducts any statistical analysis on the losses caused by such changes, nor does anyone take responsibility for them. The control of order changes is an important aspect of management in small and medium-sized enterprises, requiring careful review and accountability. (4) Control of order insertion. Additional orders are a problem that small and medium-sized enterprises must deal with in their production management, as these companies are often constrained by their customers; it is impossible to avoid receiving any additional orders at all. However, we must exercise strict control over such additional orders. Never insert orders casually; frequent such insertions can disrupt the overall production planning, ultimately affecting the functioning of the entire PMC department. Here, we would like to specifically remind some bosses and executives that, as many owners of small and medium-sized enterprises also serve as general managers, customers often call the company owners directly when there are problems. In such situations, the owner must conduct a thorough analysis and maintain close communication with the PMC to determine the impact of additional orders on the operations of the entire production department. When a company meets a particular customer’s request for an additional order, it can affect the production schedule of many other customers’ orders; such additional orders are not cost-effective. Many managers are also aware that adding tasks last minute is not a good practice, but when faced with the situation of having to add tasks forcibly, they rely on intuition and experience, lacking sufficient facts and data to convince their bosses to abandon such practices. During our on-site consulting services provided by Longou Enterprise Management, when faced with such issues, I ask the consultants to calculate the financial impact caused by these interruptions in order processing. For example, they determine how much compensation must be paid to customers due to delays in delivering other orders as a result of such interruptions. In this way, managers and executives can understand the impact of adding orders. Business owners and executives must also exercise self-discipline in this regard. They need to change their habitual practices of acting arbitrarily within the company, and strictly follow the production schedule when scheduling production tasks. Even in cases where urgent orders arise, they must communicate with the PMC department and the production department before making an objective judgment. (5) Control at the time of order closure. This step is also one that many companies tend to overlook. After each production order is completed, companies with software systems should mark the order as closed in the system; those without such systems should do so in their respective forms. At the end of the project, it is also necessary to calculate the costs of various elements such as materials, labor, and time used in the entire order, thereby laying a solid foundation for the company’s future product pricing and cost estimation. The above five points represent the key aspects of overall control over corporate orders. Production management must pay attention from the moment an order is received, as this is the starting point of production. 2. Delivery schedule breakdown: When an order is received, the sales department completes and confirms the order details. The PMC department then organizes relevant departments to review the order; after each department confirms the time required to complete the order, the PMC department uses this information, along with the status of orders currently in production, to prepare a \"delivery schedule breakdown\" for that order. The total completion time for the entire order is used, through the \"Delivery Timeline Table\", to determine the specific timing for the completion of various tasks by each department. It should be noted that the PMC department must conduct a detailed capacity load analysis based on IE’s standard working hours and the actual daily production volume for each process, before formulating the \"Delivery Schedule Table\"; it cannot be determined simply by using some formula. This is also a major reason why production planning is difficult to implement in ERP systems. After the delivery dates are broken down, the \"Delivery Date Breakdown Table\" can be shared with the business departments, allowing them to provide customers with accurate delivery dates. In this way, the delivery dates given to customers are based on concrete details, rather than being based on rough agreements with the customers or oral promises made by the sales staff. 3. Formulation of the master production plan. Once the delivery schedule has been broken down, the various tasks and departments involved in processing the order, along with the relevant timing information and order details, must be entered into the master production schedule or ERP system, thereby formulating the master production plan. When formulating the master production plan, the following aspects should be taken into account: (1) The master production plan must be allocated to all departments of the enterprise and further detailed down to the workshops within the production department. The Master Production Schedule should specify the information related to each department and workshop, as well as the time when products enter and leave production, which is also the main purpose of the previous breakdown of delivery dates. Only by clearly breaking down the overall production task can it be managed in separate departments and at different stages. In this way, when following up on orders, it is possible to clearly identify which processing step is delayed, allowing for timely action and correction, rather than waiting until the delivery date to discover that the goods are still in a certain processing stage. (2) The Master Production Schedule must be updated daily. Only by updating daily can various departments stay informed about the production status of orders, which in turn ensures the accuracy of subsequent daily planning; such planning is then meaningful as a guide. Companies with ERP systems must also remember to update it daily. (3) The Master Production Schedule should be accompanied by a General Production Progress Tracking Table. The Master Production Schedule is a summary of a factory’s overall production activities; it is also one of the most crucial documents in factory production management. The Production Progress Tracking Table provides a clear overview of the production progress across the entire enterprise. Companies must pay attention to and make good use of these two tables. 4. Formulation of Sunday plans: Daily plans are the core guiding principle of production management. Factory production management should be conducted on a daily basis, with a daily plan being formulated each day. Many companies have just one main plan; either they create a plan for each week and then check on its progress weekly. Over time, the role of planning was lost, and it completely turned into free-form production. The purpose of the daily plan is to assign daily tasks to each team and each process; only by completing these daily tasks can the weekly goals be achieved, and ultimately the monthly objectives can be realized. When implementing the daily plan, the following aspects should be taken into consideration: (1) The daily plan must be derived from the weekly plan and the master plan. It must be consistent with the weekly plan, monthly plan, master plan (as the products vary from company to company, the contents of the plans also differ), delivery deadline breakdowns, and order evaluations. Many companies create daily plans by simply checking at the end of the day which materials will be available the next day, and then issuing the daily plan for that day. This is not a true daily plan; such a way of scheduling merely ensures that the production line keeps running, but it’s hard to say whether the products produced are based on order evaluations, delivery deadline breakdowns, or the master production schedule. (2) Daily plans should be checked in advance. Why is there a master plan and a weekly plan before there can be a daily plan? Since we have discussed earlier that the production conditions of small and medium-sized enterprises are unstable, we need to prepare in advance and conduct thorough inspections so that we can make adjustments promptly when abnormalities occur during the production process. Only frequent adjustments can help to develop an effective daily plan; of course, these adjustments are not made based on the results, but rather through continuous monitoring and adjustment throughout the process, so as to ensure the successful implementation of the main production plan. (3) Daily plans should be broken down to the smallest possible units. Depending on the specific conditions of each factory, the breakdown can be done at the level of processes if that is possible, at the level of machines if that is feasible, or even at the individual level. Of course, there is another scenario: when a certain process requires repeated cross-operation among various processes, we can simply control the beginning and the end of it. (4) Daily plans must be evaluated. Conducting daily evaluations of the daily plan is a key criterion for determining whether it has been effectively implemented. Many managers tell me, “We all have daily plans, and we execute them very well.” However, when I ask whether they conduct daily evaluations, most managers answer in the negative. Why do I need to emphasize the assessment of daily plans? Because when there are no assessments and no linkage to the performance of frontline managers, many problems do not come to light. Without any assessment, it doesn’t matter whether much or little work is done; when problems arise, everyone can choose to ignore them. Perhaps what I’m saying is a bit extreme, but this is a real phenomenon I’ve seen in companies. As soon as an assessment is conducted, problems such as unreasonable plans, incomplete sets of materials, and inadequate documentation become apparent. During the initial phase of evaluation, various departments may take confrontational stances, but once all the issues are identified and resolved, and after the system has been in operation for a month or two, daily plans can be effectively put into practice. (5) The daily plan needs to be monitored in real time. Once the daily plan is established, during the actual production process, planners and production supervisors must monitor the situation in real time on the production line. During the consultation process, our teacher requires planners to go to the site every one or two hours to monitor the production progress of each production line. Only by ensuring that each production line completes its tasks on time every hour can the daily plan be successfully fulfilled. In conclusion, efficiency can be improved through the detailed breakdown of tasks. The continuous refinement of tasks involves breaking down the time and space units used in management into smaller, more detailed components. Only by doing so can we break down our production tasks layer by layer, resulting in more detailed tasks. This in turn clarifies the daily work objectives for each individual, thereby enhancing the efficiency of our organization.