Activity-on-node networks with minimal and maximal time lags and their application to make-to-order production

Maximal time lags between activities of a project play an important role in practice in addition to minimal ones. However, maximal time lags have been discussed very rarely in literature thus far. This paper shows how to model projects with minimal and maximal time lags by cyclic activity-on-node networks. As an important application, the production process for make-to-order production with limited resources is studied, which can be represented by a multi-project network where the individual operations of the jobs correspond to the nodes of the network. For different product structures, careful consideration is given to the modelling of a nondelay performance of overlapping operations by appropriately establishing minimal and maximal time lags.