Complexity and workload considerations in product mix decisions under the theory of constraints

Abstract

The literature on the product mix decision (or master production scheduling) under the Theory of Constraints (TOC), which was developed in the past two decades, has addressed this problem as a static operational decision. Consequently, the developed solution techniques do not consider the system's dynamism and the associated challenges arising from the complexity of operations during the implementation of master production schedules. This paper aims to address this gap by developing a new heuristic approach for master production scheduling under the TOC philosophy that considers the main operational factors that influence actual throughput after implementation of the detailed schedule. We examine the validity of the proposed heuristic by comparison to Integer Linear Programming and two heuristics in a wide range of scenarios using simulation modelling. Statistical analyses indicate that the new algorithm leads to significantly enhanced performance during implementation for problems with setup times. The findings show that the bottleneck identification approach in current methods in the TOC literature is not effective and accurate for complex operations in real‐world job shop systems. This study contributes to the literature on master production scheduling and product mix decisions by enhancing the likelihood of achieving anticipated throughput during the implementation of the detailed schedule. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 357–369, 2015

Restricciones en el financiamiento de los procesos en la educación superior cubana

“…Los procesos de pensamiento descritos en la TOC han sido aplicados en diferentes áreas: la Gestión Empresarial (Naor, Bernardes & Coman, 2013;Demchuk & Baitsar, 2015), en la Gestión Económico Financiera (Hajek & Tanger, 2014;Hilmola & Gupta, 2015) y la Administración de Operaciones (Ok & Park, 2014;Golmohammadi & Mansouri, 2015;Hilmola & Gupta, 2015), no obstante los autores consideran insuficiente aún, su tratamiento metodológico.…”

Manufacturing Scheduling Performance – a Case Study

“…TOC's key processes are focused on removing barriers that prevent each part from working together as an integrated whole. TOC becomes an important problem structuring and solving methodology, which changes the way of thinking of managers [16], [17], [18].…”

Production Economics with the Use of Theory of Constraints

“…Hence, a lot of attention in the literature is devoted to the comparison or combining DBR technique with two other techniques, which include JIT -Just in Time and MRP -Materials Requirements Planning (Steele, Philipoom, Malhotra & Fry, 2005), (Watson & Patti, 2008), (Cyplik, Hadaś & Domański, 2009), (Hadaś & Karaśkiewicz, 2014), (Darlington, Francis, Found & Thomas, 2015). In addition, many TOC proponents perceive the possibility of a combination of MRP techniques and DBR to create a new generation of ERP systems focused on constraints management of manufacturing enterprises (Miltenburg, 1997), (Gupta & Snyder, 2009), (Golmohammadi, 2015).…”

“…With the development of the theory of constraints PQ issue has evolved. Currently in the literature more complex forms of this example involving a larger number of products, machines and more parameters, even such as overheads and investment components are examined (Golmohammadi & Mansouri, 2015).…”