A comparison of production scheduling policies on costs, service level, and schedule changes

We consider a single product, single level, stochastic master production sc heduling (MPS) model where decisions are made under rolling planning horizo ns. Outcomes of interest are cost, service lever, and schedule stability. T he subject of this research is the MPS control system: the method used in d etermining the amount of stock planned for production in each time period. Typically, MPS control systems utilize a single buffer stock. Here, two MPS dual-buffer stock systems are developed and tested by simulation. We exten d the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology to aid in the evaluation of the simulation results, where DEA serves to increase the scope of the ex perimental design. Results indicate that the dual-buffer control systems ou tperform existing policies.