Production control strategies within multi-product batch manufacturing companies

In response to increased international competition many companies are searching for a means to improve their competitive positioning, mainly through the strategic management of manufacture. Within the multi-product batch manufacturing environment, effective control is a highly complex task, as short-term fluctuations in sales volume and product mix must be met by the manufacturing system in response to business and marketing requirements. In this paper the authors consider typical production control strategies within this environment and apply an analytic investigation incorporating steady-state queueing theory to illustrate the variations in scheduling effectiveness, plant layout and work-in-progress costs affecting production performance.