A short term production planning and scheduling model

An optimal decision making model is developed to assist the manufacturer to select among the potential customer orders, which orders to reject and which orders to accept and in what quantities such that the net operational profit during the planning time horizon will be maximized. This model is developed based on the group technology concept and assumes that (i) job splitting is allowed, (ii) all the necessary stages of operation of each job (e.g., a batch of identical parts with a specified due date, availability time, required setup time, and required processing time) at each workstation (e.g., assembly cell) is represented by a single aggregated stage of operation, (iii) the time horizon is set to be sufficiently short, and (iv) the processing priorities of the potential customer orders during the planning time horizon is specified. Based on the above model, an operational plan for optimal loading of an integrated manufacturing system consisting of a set of finite capacity workstations linked by a material handling system is obtained.