A heuristic master planning algorithm that includes fairness and flexibility

ABSTRACT

To keep up with the rapid changes in the business environment, manufacturers frequently reserve some capacity to handle unexpected situations, and they may seek to treat all demands and items equally to avoid potential losses. However, although master planning tools require minimal costs, they tend to produce unrealistic results. Therefore, this study proposes a master planning algorithm that integrates fairness along with other demands, as well as flexibility for reserved capacity. The proposed fairness and flexibility master planning algorithm (FFMPA) produces a master planning result that satisfies various demands, including flexibility and fairness. In terms of scale, the FFMPA can produce master planning results within 0.02 second, even for problems that a nonlinear mathematical model cannot solve after an hour. In terms of quality, the FFMPA decreases differences in overall costs to less than 0.25%, relative to results from a nonlinear mathematical model. Therefore, these results should encourage manufacturers to consider fairness and flexibility, in their master plans, even if their primary goal is cost efficiency, to improve their planning performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Multichannel demand fairness
• capacity flexibility
• master production planning
• heuristic planning algorithm
• supply chain management

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C32.

Acknowledgments

This research was sponsored by the National Science and Technology Council in Taiwan, under project number NSTC 109-2410-H-002-072.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ching-Chin Chern: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Supervision, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Resources, Project administration, Chun-Ying Leng: Software, Investigation, Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing – original draft, Bo Hsiao: Methodology,Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Resources, Project administration

Data availability statement

The dataset generated during the current study is not publicly available as it contains proprietary information that the authors acquired through a license. Information on how to obtain it and reproduce the analysis is available from the corresponding author on request.

Research involving human participants and/or animals

This article does not contain any studies involving animals performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Science and Technology Council [NSTC109-2410-H-002-072].