Coordinated production scheduling for make-to-order manufacturing

Coordinated production scheduling in a make-to-order manufacturing environment has not received a great deal of research attention. In such a manufacturing environment, an order represents an end product comprising the multiple components which are its individual line items. Firms which produce primarily to custom order attempt to coordinate production of the line items such that all these items are produced at or near the same time, and as close to the order due date as possible. This paper describes research done in this southeastern U.S. producer of tapes (i.e., package-sealing reinforcing, masking, and duct tapes). The research encompasses both heuristic approaches which are implemented using microcomputers, and optimization approaches which are implemented using IBM’s-MPSX/MIP code on a large mainframe computer (IBM 3081). Extensive test results from application of the model are presented and discussed.