Manufacturing Planning

This chapter is concerned with the manufacturing planning level. That is, we focus on the tasks to be done in the departments fabrication and assembly. Figure 6.1 shows how the two tasks fabrication (F) and assembly (A) of the order level are exploded into parts (P1 – P2), subassemblies (S1, S2), and final assembly (A1) at the manufacturing level. The weights on the arcs give the ‘quantity per’ factors, i.e., the amount required of each part and subassembly in order to obtain one subassembly or assembly (cf. Hax and Candea [149] p. 442). The decision problem at this level is to schedule subassemblies and assemblies and to determine lotsizes for parts with the aim of minimizing cost while taking relevant interdependencies into account. In what follows we specify the performance measure and the interdependencies.