Integrating material coordination and capacity load smoothing in multi-product multi-phase production systems

In all papers on capacity load smoothing today, the production situation is always studied in isolation, i.e. not considering it as part of a manufacturing chain. If the authors do not study it in isolation the materials aspect will play an important role. As well as the availability of components for the next production phase as the availability of materials might influence the structure of the load-based work-order release rule used. In this research the authors have investigated this by not only retarding the release of work-orders but also advancing work orders, which in general is possible due to a surplus of material. They called this proactive load-based work-order release. Furthermore, the authors distinguished two types of components, critical and non-critical components, leading to what they called selective load-based work-order release. The effects of the delivery performance and the inventory holding costs have been investigated by a simulation study. It turns out that proactive release is better than conventional load-based work-order release but still worse than immediate release. Selective load-based work-order relase might lead to a positive effect on the inventory holding costs, however this depends on the ration of the inventory holding costs of the critical and non-critical components.