College of Business & Economics

Department Management: MBA Program

Course: Management theories and Practices

Individual Assignment _ Article Review

Title: Aggregate planning to minimize cost of production of ABC Company with forecasting and
master production schedule approach. Gloria Fenny Delavina Simanjuntak, Hani Saffanah
Putri, Intan Putri Maharani Sinaga, and Nastiti Adibestari, 2022.

Reviewed By: By: Yayesh Atalay Admas ID No. IUPGW/0138/15

Submitted to: Dr. Meselu Alamnie

March, 2023

Injibara
 Introduction

I have reviewed an article named “aggregate planning to minimize cost of production of ABC
company with forecasting and master production schedule approach" that was written by Gloria
Fenny Delavina Simanjuntak, Hani Saffanah Putri, Intan Putri Maharani Sinaga, and Nastiti
Adibestari in 2022. It was a good practice to read in-depth this work and forward my
understanding about it and will provide me an in-depth opportunity to understand about the
operations management. Of course, the task of the review will pave ways to understand about the
forecasting, aggregate planning, master production schedule, and the three basic strategies; chase
strategy, leverage strategy and mixed strategy. Accordingly, first I have read the article critically
and the review was made based on the points forwarded from the instructor and against scientific
publications.

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 1. Article summary

The authors of journal article have tried to articulate the overall purpose of the study.
Accordingly, the major purpose of the article named “aggregate planning to minimize cost of
production of ABC company with forecasting and master production schedule approach” is to
describe how to develop a given company's production schedule, how to satisfy customer
demand, and spend the least amount of money on production inputs. It has attempted to develop
a comprehensive production timetable and satisfy demand while spending the least amount of
money on production inputs and to create a comprehensive strategy to reduce production costs.

From the purpose of the paper we can understand that the topic of the research is scientifically
and socially important in the sense that companies having a prior objective to maximize profit
through customer satisfaction could sustain their business only if they improve efficiency.
Efficiency here denotes effective time and cost utilization. Therefore, the paper is socially
important because it has the objective to fill the demand gap of the society and scientifically
important because the output of any production company is based on the process called cause
effect relationship. In this sense time and cost are considered as inputs and the efficiency of these
resources increases the production of the company.

The major research gap identified and tried to fill out by the paper is its attempt to
comprehensively study production efficiency, demand satisfaction and creating a comprehensive
strategy to reduce production cost. Other researchers were stuck to analyze specifically to one
dimension of a given company; production efficiency or demand satisfaction or internal work
process. Therefore, the paper has aimed to fill the identified gap by widely studying the
comprehensive strategic issues and tried to cover the whole strategy of the ABC Company.

Reading this journal article, I did not find a research finding indicated separately in the work. As
this article is published in one of the reputable journals, it was expected that the research article
has to have clearly figure out the finding. Yet, it tried to conclude that it would be much better if
ABC Company used the Mixed Strategy over chase strategy and leverage strategy for aggregate
planning. From this we may infer that the two strategies were not as such important for the
improvement of the company’s purpose and minimize the overall cost of production.

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 2. Assessment of data quality

The research has used a secondary data and it is a descriptive type of research that aims to
describe the characteristic and to provide an objective explanation, comparison, and evaluation
as a decision for the company. To determine the alternative strategies the paper has used several
data such as production capacity (technology, set of operations, and equipment set), cost of
production (regular production costs, the production cost of overtime and subcontracting costs,
handling costs and the cost of inventory shortages).

The major source of data is a secondary source. It has covered from December 2021 to March
2022 in order to determine predictive forecasting demand for the next three months (April to
June 2022). The study has used a software window to analyze the capacity problems that occur
in the ABC Company and optimize all the company’s resources through minimizing all costs
incurred to meet customer demand. The authors have tried to indicate variables and the
distinguished and displayed variables are cost/expenses, and sales, which are appropriate to the
topic of discussion. The time period that the data covers is also described.

However, I could not found the description of unit of analysis, the number of observations, and
procedure of data collection. Even I do not think the variables identified are enough to measure
the cost of production, customer demand, planning or forecasting. Therefore, from the purpose of
the research the data collected is insufficient as per my understanding. This can be considered as
a limitation.

For instance, among other things aggregate planning can be measured by demand, capacity, and
company policy in addition to unit price and cost. Customer demand can be measured by surveys
and market studies. Yet, these important points were not included in the paper reviewed, which
makes the data quality less important.

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 3. Assessment of research design and method

When I read the methodology section, I understood that the source of data is a secondary source,
the data covered from December 2021 to March 2022 and it has employed POM QM software
window to analyze the capacity problems that occur in the ABC Company. Nevertheless, it is
difficult to determine the software is suitable for the nature of the research because the authors
have nothing to say about the software.

Beyond this, the researchers could not narrate us their research methodology clearly including
the limitations that they thought. If someone reads on page 1175 one may find the title methods,
but they could not have said anything about the instruments, procedures, hypothesis and
assumptions, models, approaches, and other important parts of research methodology.

Moreover, I have not seen any justifications made by the researchers for the chosen methodology
throughout this part of the article. In addition the researchers did not tell us whether they
conducted reliability and validity of instruments they used or not. These can be taken as
limitations. Consequently, for me as a reviewer it becomes difficult to conclude about the design
and methodology of the paper is suited or not for the research goal.

4. Critical evaluation of the article

As my knowledge is concerned, the authors of this article tried to align the conclusion with the
previous findings in the area. But I believe that the conclusion is too crud and the authors did not
figure out it clearly. In general the strengths and limitations of the paper is presented this line
under.

 Strengths of the article

 The paper is found to be a relevant study on the field of operations management. Therefore,
the article has contributions in giving knowledge on the issue.
 An introduction of the article is well narrated and the purpose of the article is identified
clearly. It provides a description of the basic facts and importance of the research area. That
means it tries to answer what is the research area, the motivation of the research or the

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 triggering factors for conducting this particular research, and it also tells us how important it
is for the knowledge advancement.

 Limitations and areas of improvement

 The methodology of the article is poorly stated and there is justification to use this
methodology. The methodology of the research should have included its approach, type,
procedure, instruments, sampling units and related important components.
 The finding and the conclusion of the article is not well indicated. The major findings of the
article should be disclosed and the conclusion should have been made based on the
predetermined objectives.
 There are no recommendations made based on the findings of the study. In research
recommendations are important as long as the problem is studied and the findings are
obtained.
 The method of analysis and test are not clear. There should be presented method of data
analysis that the authors employed once collected their data.
 The researchers did not tell us whether they conducted reliability and validity of instruments
he used or not. These issues are important because readers can conceive whether the
instruments were appropriate to the study or not.
 The findings of the study are not supported, or contrasted with previous empirical findings.

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 Conclusion

The topic of the paper can be said interesting and up-to date as operations management is a
critical point in business enterprises. It has raised important points that practitioners and
academicians can have understanding on the subjects. Nevertheless, the article lacks logical
flow, that is, some very important elements of an article are totally missed. For example, if we
see the missed parts, the recommendation and statement of the problem part should have been
dealt separately and clearly. But these parts are missed for reasons I could not know. In sum,
though the authors have done the aforementioned flaws that I have tried to mention above, they
tried to articulate the issue that they brought to deal with.