Routing, Scheduling and Dispatching are vital components of production management inindustrial engineering.

The routing is a vital portion of production control and production management. It lays down the flow of work in the plant. It determines how and where the work is to be done, what machines are to be used and it prescribes the path and sequence of operations to be followed. This provides a basis for scheduling, dispatching and control functions.

The scheduling may be called as the time phase of loading. The loading means the assignment of work to a facility (man, machine, group of men, group of machines) where as scheduling includes, in addition, the specifications of time and sequence in which the work is to be done.

The dispatching is the most important activity of the production, planning and control. It is defined as the physical release of work authorization to a operating facility (men, machine) in accordance with a previously established plan developed by routing and scheduling functions.