Welcome to PlanningSkills.COM

This website focuses on a wide variety of topics related to organization and individual planning situations. The primary focus is business planning.

Planning is an anticipatory decision making process that involves situation analysis, forecasting outcomes and events, evaluating alternative courses of action, anticipating consequences and considering implementation issues and contingencies. Planning often begins with asking one or more questions, for example: What if ...? Could we ...? Do we ...? Is it possible...? How should we respond ...? How can we ...? Is it feasible to ...?

In general, planning is a proactive process that is intended to help individuals, groups and organizations achieve performance objectives.

Featured Glossary Term

A process of evaluating and acquiring need for productive resources to ensure availability meets demand. Capacity decisions have a direct influence on performance of a production system in respect of both resource productivity and customer service (i.e. delivery performance). Excess capacity results in low resource productivity while inadequate capacity leads to poor customer service. Capacity planning decisions can be long or short-term decisions. Long-term capacity planning decisions concern expansion/contraction of major facilities required in the conversion process, economics of multiple shift operation, and selection of vendors for major components. Short-term capacity planning decisions concern issues like planning overtime work and sub-contracting, adjusting work shifts. Break-even analysis is a useful tool for capacity planning.

Some common key decisions are:

1. Amount of capacity needed

2. Timing of changes in capacity

3. Amount of capacity flexibility needed in facilities

4. Estimate of future capacity requirements

5. Cost of capacity alternatives

Featured Planning Tip

When planning an action, one must allocate more than sufficient resources to help insure success. Concentrate or mass resources to execute actions quickly and effectively.

MASS means concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time. More generally the principle is concentrate your efforts, don't scatter your forces.

ECONOMY OF FORCE means allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts.

The priciples of MASS and ECONOMY OF FORCE are two of 9 Principles of War in the Army Field Manual (FM-3) of Military Operations.