Production planning and scheduling in the context of cyclic delivery schedules

This paper considers a factory which produce n items on a single facility a nd which is confronted to a cyclic demand: each item is ordered relatively to a cyclic delivery schedule with a mean quantity for each delivery. This kind of much less than contract-order much greater than is found very frequ ently, especially in the big distribution and the automotive sectors. So, t he long-term information becomes the due date and the exact quantity that w ill be delivered is only known in the short term. This work aims at defining a new production management model and especially determining cyclic production schedules in this context. The proposed appr oaches are based on generating, evaluating and selecting the best productio n sequences and phases. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.