Hierarchical production planning-Necessity, problems, and methods

Hierarchical production planning (HPP) may be considered as an attempt to solve the decrepancies between theoretical developments in Operations Research and practical requirements of production planning by the following devices: (a) Separation of planning areas defined by organisational units and coordination by controlled interfaces. (b) Use of the natural time-structure of the planning process. (c) Aggregation to reduce the amount of data required. The basic concepts as well as a classification of models and case studies are presented; finally, aspects of future development of HPP are sketched.