Order release in production planning and control systems: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Production planning and control (PPC) systems are important to the competitiveness of manufacturing firms and their ability to benefit from recent technological advances. We give an overview of research and unsolved research questions in PPC systems related to the order release function that sets output targets for autonomous production units that manage production at the shop-floor level. We describe the hierarchical Manufacturing Planning and Control (MPC) and Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) architectures for PPC systems prevalent in practice and the positioning of the order release task within these frameworks. We then describe the research streams relevant to order release, optimisation models for order release planning, and the relation of these models to the overall PPC system. Modelling the dynamic response of production units to time-varying work input, which represents an extension of classical production theory by incorporating the time dimension, is identified as the major modelling challenge. We conclude by suggesting several unsolved research questions that should encourage researchers to work on this topic which is far from mature.

KEYWORDS:

• Production planning
• order release
• cycle times
• hierarchical production planning
• optimization

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There is no data set associated with this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hubert Missbauer

Prof. Dr. Hubert Missbauer studied Business Administration at the University of Linz/Austria, majoring in Production Management and Information Systems. He received his Diploma degree in 1982 and his Doctoral degree in 1986. Topic of his ‘Habilitation’ (post-doctoral thesis) was A new design of Manufacturing Planning and Control Systems based on the workload control concept. He is currently Full Professor for Production and Logistics Management at the University of Innsbruck/Austria. His main research interests are planning concepts and methods of production planning and control systems and the application of quantitative methods in business. Currently his research focusses on models for order release planning and on production scheduling in the steel-making industry.

Reha Uzsoy

Reha Uzsoy is Clifton A. Anderson Distinguished Professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University. He holds BS degrees in Industrial Engineering and Mathematics and an MS in Industrial Engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. He received his Ph.D in Industrial and Systems Engineering in 1990 from the University of Florida, and held faculty positions in Industrial Engineering at Purdue University prior to joining North Carolina State University in 2007. His teaching and research interests are in production planning and supply chain management. Before coming to the US he worked as a production engineer with Arcelik AS, a major appliance manufacturer in Istanbul, Turkey. He has also been a visiting researcher at Intel Corporation and IC Delco. He was named Outstanding Young Industrial Engineer in Education in 1997 and a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers in 2005, and has received awards for both undergraduate and graduate teaching. He is the author of more than 130 refereed journal papers and book chapters, two monographs and three edited books.