Production control
The team that schedules and watches the batch: setting up job definitions, following each night's run, and dealing with failures.
Also written prod control, batch operations, scheduling team
Production control is the team that looks after batch scheduling. At some sites it is a separate team, at others a part of operations. Its members know how the overnight run fits together better than almost anyone.
The work has two sides. During the day, they maintain the scheduler: adding new jobs, changing dependencies and calendars when applications change, and making sure changes go in through change control. During the run, they watch it: checking that jobs start and finish on time, holding or releasing work, and acting when something fails.
When a job abends, production control usually decides the first response, following the runbook. They might rerun it, skip it, or call the application support team, depending on what the runbook says and whether the job is on the critical path.
It is a common entry role into mainframe work. It teaches how a bank's systems connect, how batch is organised and how production really runs, which is useful in almost every later role.
Where can I learn this hands-on?
Right here, at ZedBank. You take a junior job at a simulated bank and learn each part of the work by doing it, with Zed beside you. There's nothing to install.
Start at ZedBankRelated
- Batch schedulerSoftware that submits production jobs automatically in the right order, at the right time, based on what has already succeeded.
- OperatorThe person who watches the running systems, responds to messages, and starts, stops and recovers work.
- RunbookThe written procedure for operating a system or responding to a known failure, step by step.
- Production supportKeeping live systems running: diagnosing failures, fixing what broke, and getting the service back.
- Critical pathThe chain of dependent batch jobs that decides when the whole batch run finishes; any delay on it delays the finish.
- Control-MBMC's batch scheduling product, which decides when each job runs based on times, dependencies and conditions.