Production management practice in a developing country: A case study

A real application of the economic order quantity (EOQ) and the production scheduling problems, both of which are relevant to the production operation of a chemical firm with a single facility that produces to orders, are discussed. A number of difficulties, typical of a developing country environment, have precluded the direct use of traditional analytical instruments, and the options proposed as well as the origins of these difficulties are related. In the EOQ case, the approach chosen is a descriptive procedure that simulates the consequences of alternative policies. In the case of production scheduling, it is noted that setups are strongly sequence dependent and the satisfaction of due dates is a hard challenge. Therefore, the problem is seen as a sequencing with Earliness and Tardiness Penalties Problem, for which one heuristic method of simple conception is proposed. It is important to notice that organization and human development programs have played a predominant role in the efficiency gains, which is an outcome not unexpected in the less industrialized countries.