A hybrid method for large-scale short-term scheduling of make-and-pack production processes

Philipp Baumann and Norbert Trautmann

European Journal of Operational Research, 2014, vol. 236, issue 2, 718-735

Abstract: Due to the ongoing trend towards increased product variety, fast-moving consumer goods such as food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals are typically manufactured through so-called make-and-pack processes. These processes consist of a make stage, a pack stage, and intermediate storage facilities that decouple these two stages. In operations scheduling, complex technological constraints must be considered, e.g., non-identical parallel processing units, sequence-dependent changeovers, batch splitting, no-wait restrictions, material transfer times, minimum storage times, and finite storage capacity. The short-term scheduling problem is to compute a production schedule such that a given demand for products is fulfilled, all technological constraints are met, and the production makespan is minimised. A production schedule typically comprises 500–1500 operations. Due to the problem size and complexity of the technological constraints, the performance of known mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulations and heuristic approaches is often insufficient.

Keywords: Scheduling; Make-and-pack production; Hybrid method; Real-world production process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:236:y:2014:i:2:p:718-735

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2013.12.040

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