An integrated approach for production planning-A case study

This study addresses production planning in a multi-product, multi-machine environment. The products manufactured are high precision metal tubes. The production process consists of three major operations: pilgering, pickling/cleaning, and annealing. These three operations are repeated four to five times to make the final products. The authors first analyze the system capacity and then develop heuristics for the production scheduling problem. The scheduling system consists of MRP logic and the OPT concepts of backward and forward scheduling. Further, the effectiveness of the scheduling rules is studied by simulating flow of orders through the production process. The benefits of using such an integrated system are illustrated.