Operational solutions for short-term production planning and control in a make-to-order company

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method for short-term production planning, focused on control and regulation of work-in-process in a make-to-order production system. The possible improvements in terms of performance indices (production lead time and reliability of delivery dates) of the job shop are pointed out. The solution implied a revision of the production process and the application of input-output control methods for operations management at job shop level. The production stages that were independent from customers’ orders were decoupled from activities that could be performed before an order entry. For workload control the load-oriented manufacturing control (LOMC) method was applied to a manufacturing area that produces order-specified items. The experimental phase, on the one hand, gave insights on improvements that can be obtained with the proposed method and, on the other hand, made it possible to define dispatching rules that were effective for work order management in the case study.