MODIFIED PRODUCTION SWITCHING HEURISTICS FOR AGGREGATE PRODUCTION PLANNING

The Production Switching Heuristic (PSH) developed by Mellichamp and L ove [Management Science 24, 1242-1251] has been suggested as a more re alistic, practical and intuitively appealing approach to aggregate pro duction planning (APP). In this paper, the PSH has been modified to pr esent a more sophisticated open grid search procedure for solving the APP problem. The effectiveness of this approach has been demonstrated by determining a near-optimal solution to the classic paint factory pr oblem using a personal computer based application written in THINK PAS CAL. The performance of the modified production switching heuristics i s then compared in the context of the paint factory problem with resul ts obtained by other prominent APP models including the linear decisio n rule, parametric production planning, and PSH to conclude that the m odified PSH offers a better minimum cost solution than the original PS H model.