Planning and scheduling packaging lines in food industry

This paper concerns the development and implementation of a pilot Decision Support System for the bottleneck packaging facilities of a large dairy company. The planning and scheduling problem has been decomposed into two levels: a tactical and operational control level. On the tactical level a feasible (daily) ‘master production schedule’ of the orderbook is determined. A Mixed Integer Linear Programming model is the basis for making this schedule. On the operational control level two sequencing subproblems have to be solved. For the solution of these subproblems well-known heuristics have been used.