Title:
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A production planning system for plastic footwear in a seasonal market
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Modern injection-moulding machinery which produces several, pairs of
plastic footwear at a time brought increased production planning
problems to a factory.
The demand for its footwear is seasonal but the company's manning policy
keeps a fairly constant production level thus determining the aggregate
stock. Production planning must therefore be done within the limitations
of a specified total stock.
The thesis proposes a new production planning system with four subsystems.
These are sales forecasting, resource planning, and two levels
of production scheduling: (a) aggregate decisions concerning the,
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'manufacturing group' (group of products) to be produced in each machine
each week, and (b) detailed decisions concerning the products within a
manufacturing group to be scheduled into each mould-place.
The detailed scheduling is least dependent on imflrovements elsewhere s.o
the sub-systems were tackled in reverse order. The thesis concentrates
on the production scheduling sub-systems which will provide most. of the
benefits.
The aggregate scheduling solution depends principally on the aggregate
stocks of each manufacturing group and their division into 'safety stoc;;ks'
(to prevent shortages) and 'freestocks' (to permit batch production).
The problem is too complex for exact solution but a good heuristic
solution, which has yet to be implemented, is provided by minimising
graphically immediate plus expected future costs.
The detailed problem splits into determining the optimal safety stocks and batch quantities given the appropriate aggregate stocks" It is
found that the optimal safety stocks are proportional to the demand
The ideal batch quantities are based on a modified, formula for the
Economic Batch Quantity and the product schedule is created week by week
using a priority system which schedules to minimise expected future
costs. This algorithm performs almost optimally.
The detailed scheduling solution was implemented and achieved the
target savings for the whole project in favourable circumstances.
Future plans include full implementation.
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