Delivery date determination based on the best job schedule: The SimTriD algorithm

In a dynamic make-to-order manufacturing environment, keeping the promised delivery date for a customer order is crucial for a company to promote customer satisfaction and generate further businesses. To do so, a company should be able to quote the delivery date that can be achieved with the capacity available on the shop floor. The problem of determining a delivery date for an incoming order with consideration of resource capacity, workload, and finished-product inventory can hardly be solved by an analytical solution procedure. Based on computer simulation, this paper presents the SimTriD algorithm which provides the way of determining a delivery date through the best job schedule that efficiently utilizes manufacturing resources with consideration of interacting factors such as resource utilization, finished-product inventory, and due date. The comparison simulation shows that the SimTriD algorithm performs better than other algorithms.