Level 4 planning detail: operations plan (OPLAN). An OPLAN is a complete and detailed joint plan that contains a complete description of the CONOPS, all the annexes applicable to the plan, and a TPFDD. It identifies the specific forces, functional support, and resources needed to execute the plan and provides closing estimates for its flow into the theater of operations. The product for this level can be a COA report, a command directive, a commander's estimate, or a memorandum.
Decisions about material production and the allocation of raw materials and personnel are made at this level. Unlike strategic control, operational control focuses more on internal sources of information and affects smaller units or aspects of the organization, such as production levels or equipment choice. This level of planning involves the least amount of detail and focuses on producing several courses of action (COA) to address a contingency. Decisions at this level involve the interrelationships between allies, decisions on factors of production, national will and social issues.
Lower level managers can make recommendations for their departments, but they follow the example of senior managers. The decision that the primary invasion of occupied Europe in 1944 would take place in Normandy (and not in southern France, off the coast of Germany or from Italy and around the Alps or across the Alps) was a strategic-level decision. Decisions at the military's strategic level are made at the highest-level headquarters on the ground, most of the time in conjunction with the approval of the National Command Authority. Operational planning is carried out with the intention of establishing missions and objectives that will bend the enemy as you please in an entire theater of operations.
The lower levels of a company are in contact with customers and recognize new trends or new competition before top management. Operational level plans are known as campaigns and, by design, each consists of a series of battles and confrontations (e.g., mid-level management uses operational controls to make medium-term decisions, usually for a year or two). Once again, referring to June 1944, the general plan to invade the beaches and the entire province beyond the beaches, Operation Overlord, was an operational-level plan.
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