Decision support for the scheduling of subcontract manufacture

Presents work that addresses the issue of decision support for the operatio nal management of Subcontract manufacture. Theoretical study has been combi ned with empirical research and practical industrial investigation with reg ard to distributed manufacture systems which incorporate subcontract manufa cturing arrangements. These has been a particular focus on the study of res ource planning and scheduling for subcontract manufacture in SMEs in the UK electronics assembly industry. This work led to the analysis, modelling, i mplementation and test of an object-oriented advisory system to assist with scheduling far this domain which demonstrated the utility of a proposed co ncept of captivity-based scheduling. Contemporary research in this area and existing commercial decision support solutions for manufacturing planning, scheduling and control in SMEs have been explored. Concludes that current commercial software systems for subcontract manufacture are underdeveloped Further argues that software development tools and platforms are increasing ly available to facilitate the creation of practical decision support syste ms for distributed organizational forms of manufacture.