A decision support system for job release in make-to-order companies

A Decision Support System (DSS), specifically designed to address the needs of small- to medium-sized make-to-order companies, is currently being developed. It includes two of the most important features in such a system. First, it aims to integrate the production and marketing functions within a firm. Second, it is a hierarchical system which addresses two decision levels-the customer-enquiry stage and the job-release stage. That part of the DSS developed for the job-release stage is described. At this stage the aim of the system is to maintain low work-in-progress inventory levels whilst ensuring that all jobs are released in time to be delivered by their promised delivery dates. An approach which uses input/output control is proposed to achieve these objectives. The major advance of the proposed approach is its ability to control the total manufacturing lead times of jobs rather than just considering the shopfloor throughput time.