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Supporting Quick Response Through Scheduling of Make‐to‐Stock Production/Inventory Systems *
Author(s) -
Johnson M. Eric,
Scudder Gary
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
decision sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.238
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1540-5915
pISSN - 0011-7315
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5915.1999.tb01617.x
Subject(s) - computer science , operations research , scheduling (production processes) , stock (firearms) , customer service , safety stock , industrial engineering , operations management , business , service (business) , marketing , supply chain , economics , mathematics , engineering , mechanical engineering
Scheduling of traditional job shops in make‐to‐order systems has seen extensive research over the past three decades. In such systems, performance is often related to various job completion metrics such as average flow time, average lateness, etc. This paper examines a scheduling problem in a make‐to‐stock environment where individual job completion measures are irrelevant. In this case, customer orders are satisfied through on‐hand inventory where customer service is more closely related to the manufacturer's ability to quickly satisfy demand. We consider the role of scheduling in reducing inventories and improving customer service in the context of a manufacturer who assembles several different products on a single assembly line. We develop scheduling rules for such a system and experimentally compare their performance to those typically used in such environments. Our results indicate that rules which consider the inventory position and demand forecast outperform traditional fixed cycle rules.