Order planning for networked make-to-order enterprises - a case study

From the general trend towards global markers and a growing customer orient ation, new concepts and forms of organisation are emerging, such as distrib uted or networked enterprises. One key requirement of these new paradigms i s the availability of models and tools to support order negotiation with th e optimisation of manufacturing routes and logistics and ensuring the co-or dination of all participating entities. We address the problem of planning an incoming customer order to be produced in a distributed (multi-site) and multi-stage production system, in particular, we have used as a case study the industry of semiconductors (in the business area of application specif ic integrated circuits). The problem is tackled in a hierarchical model, in two levels: there is a global network planning procedure, and a set of loc al capacity models associated to the different production units reflecting their particular features. An approach based on simulated annealing is pres ented, as well as a specially designed constructive heuristic, that takes i nto account many of the real world constraints and complexities. The genera l performance of the simulated annealing algorithm is assessed through some preliminary computational experiments. Finally, some concluding remarks an d current directions of research are presented.