Abstract In teaching the process and concepts related to the planning and control of operations, many different tools are discussed independently of each other. Due to the complexity of the planning process it is difficult to bring many of these tools together into a practical problem for the students to solve. Fortunately, with a computer the mechanical computations of the tools can be eliminated, and a practical problem can be developed for the students to solve. The project described in this note illustrates how model building, optimization, simulation, and decision rules for variance investigation can be used in the planning and control of the operations of a manufacturing firm. One of the major limitations of the project is the time a student has to wait for the output once he has submitted the budget cards. In the application described in this note most students could achieve only two runs a day. Eventually, this deficiency will be overcome when the PROFPLAN programs is adopted for use with cathode ray tubes. With this adaptation, once the student has developed his initial budget, he will be able to change the input variables and receive the results of the change almost instantly.
Benjamin et al. (Mon,) studied this question.