Integrated Planning Systems.

Many organizations have developed computerized management information systems at the middle levels to help managers prepare subplans. The purpose of the report is to investigate the ways in which a Central Authority - responsible for the preparation of a plan - may integrate the subplans to produce a plan that is consistent and appropriate to the objectives of the organization as a whole. The emphasis is on an iterative process in which the Central Authority dispatches a message to the subplanners at the lower levels, analyzes their responses, and either dispatches a new message or terminates the process and prepares a plan. The early chapters distinguish strategic from tactical planning and suggest iterative procedures appropriate to each. The later chapters illustrate some of these procedures suggest how the Central Authority may use them to control the lower-level planning processes and discuss the possible applications of integrated planning and the implications for computer scientists, management scientists, and managers. Author