In the product creation process, production planning is perhaps the most important process, second only to product development. However, software-based support for production planning at companies currently takes place against the background of established structures and the fulfillment of location-specific requirements using what is frequently a number of different digital tools. This gives rise to an extremely heterogeneous environment as far as planning tools are concerned. This heterogeneity is also reflected in the planning processes themselves and hinders end-to-end planning. In particular, it makes cross-location planning, the comparison of planning results and the exchange between different planning disciplines and planning departments very difficult. A reference process for production planning is required to ensure end-to-end planning and the harmonization of multiple planning processes.

The creation of just such a reference planning process for production planning is the aim of this PSI Recommendation. For the purpose of defining this reference process, the production planning is first of all placed in the context of the product creation process. Production planning starts shortly after the initial idea for a product using initial input from product development and runs in parallel with product development to a point well beyond the start of production. A further look is also taken at production planningrelated tasks required for series planning during manufacturing and assembly.

The reference process discussed in this recommendation has a strictly defined scope. On the one hand, it examines production planning for products in series production. On the other hand, only the tasks related to planning the production of such a product are analyzed. Therefore, the control-based planning of orders, e.g. in production lots and production itself are not explicitly part of this recommendation. Furthermore, as far as logistics are concerned, only internal logistics will be examined. External logistics as well as supply chain management will be dealt with, as appropriate, in the further work performed by the ProSTEP iViP Digital Manufacturing Project Group.

In this recommendation, the reference process for production planning has been broken down in two ways, according to phases and planning discipline. On the one hand, the production planning process has been subdivided into the phases concept planning, rough planning, detailed planning and series planning according to the level of maturity of planning. In addition, the planning disciplines manufacturing planning, assembly planning, layout planning and logistics planning are examined in each phase. This results in a matrix of corresponding detailed sub-processes for the entire reference process. . Important impulses are related to works which started at Daimler and found their final documentation within the doctoral thesis of Dr. Mathias Engel at the Steinbeis University Berlin (cp. Engel). In this recommendation, these sub-processes are defined with the generally possible process steps, irrespective of functional or organizational constraints, and together constitute the reference process for production planning.

To illustrate how this type of reference process should be used in practice, typical use cases are described by way of example.

Compared with version 2.0, some minor editorial changes were carried out, which let to the publication of this version 2.0.1.