PLANNING

• Planning - The management function that involves anticipating future trends and determining the best strategies and tactics to achieve organizational objectives, selecting the best course of action so that the desired result may be achieved. (Nickels et al)
• Top/Upper Management – sets long-term company goals, such as developing new products, entering newmarkets, selling off part of business.
• Middle Management – Interprets plans from uppermanagement and puts theminto action.
• Lower-Level Management – Implements plans from above.
• Strategic Planning - The process of determining the major goals of the organization and the policies and strategies for obtaining and using resources to achieve those goals.
• Strategic Plan - The output of Strategic Planning which spells out the decision about long range goals and "the course of action to achieve these goals".
• Planning - The selection and sequential ordering of tasks required to achieve an organizational goal. (Aldag and Stearns)
• Planning - Is deciding on what will be done, who will do it, where, when and how it will be done. (Cole and Hamilton)
• Intermediate Planning - Refers of detemining the contributions that subunits can make with allocated resources.
• Operational Planning - Process of determining how specific tasks can best be accomplished on time with available resources.
• Planning Process Involves:

  1. Setting organizational, divisional or unit goals.
  2. Developing strategies or tactics to reach those goals.
  3. Determining resources needed.
  4. Setting standards.
• as an engineer he/she should provide a sense of direction to his firm(if he is the chief executive), to his division, or to his units (if he is supervisor).

  Setting organizational, divisional or unit goals
• after determining the goals, the next task is to provide the means to realize them, and that is having strategies.

  Developing strategies or tactics to reach those goals
• Setting standards - standards for measuring performance are set in planning.
• Goals - Is defined as the precise statement of results sought, quantified in time andmagnitude where possible.
• Determing the resources needed - the quality and quantity of the reources needed must be correctly determined.
• Tactic - is a short term action taken by management to adjust to negative internal or external influences.
• Strategy - defined as a course of action aimed at ensuring that the organization will achieve its objectives.
• Tactical Plan - indicates the decision about short-term goals and the courses of action.