The present review is a systematic literature review-cum-bibliometric analysis of the application of operations research (OR) to production planning and optimisation in manufacturing. The data for the review was procured from Elsevier’s Scopus database using the keywords “Production Planning”, “Optimization” and “Manufacturing”, and was screened using the PRISMA framework. The final database comprises 1,591 articles and review papers published between 2016 and 2026. Using Biblioshiny, the study examines publication trends, leading sources, authorship and the thematic structure of the field. Annual output rose from 75 documents in 2016 to 273 in 2026, an annual growth rate of 13.79%, spread across 568 sources and 5,270 authors. Production control and optimisation, and smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0, were found to be the dominant themes, while sustainability-oriented multi-objective decision making is emerging. The review identifies eight research priorities, including common benchmarks, fair comparison of learning-based and classical OR methods, digital twins, human-centric planning and integrated, resilient planning.