Constrained ‘look-ahead’ manufacturing

The authors describe a manufacturing environment that consists of one or more feeder shops supplying a flexible final assembly operation. Each feeder shop attempts to operate according to a ‘look-ahead’ manufacturing discipline. Components arrive at the final assembly shop in the quantity required and in the time period required. Under constrained ‘look-ahead’ manufacturing, each line is limited in its ability to respond to fluctuations in demands imposed by final assembly, and thus, deviations from ‘look-ahead’ manufacturing arise. If the quantity of production that cannot be built according to the ‘look-ahead’ philosophy is too large, then this manufacturing discipline may not be appropriate. The authors formulate a linear programming model that determines the maximum quantity of production that may be built according to a ‘look-ahead’ disciple in a constrained manufacturing environment. They propose a fast heuristic to solve the model. It yields an optimal solution under certain conditions.