Material planning for production kits under uncertainty

Abstract

A kit is a specific collection of components and/or tools needed for completing a procedure or producing a product. A multiperiod material planning system for production kits under the demand and procurement lead-time uncertainty is considered when component sharing among kits is plausible. Simulation experiments show that component sharing improves the system's service measure of average kit availability and average backorder quantity per period. Also, carrying component safety stock only enhances the benefits of component sharing by reducing the average backorder quantity at the expense of increased inventories, but does not improve the average kit availability.

Keywords:

• production kit
• material planning
• component sharing
• simulation

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of NSF grant EPS-0091900, and appreciate the programming support of Ms. Chun Fan, and Mr. Anupam Pattanayak.

F. Fred Choobineh is a Professor of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he also holds a courtesy appointment as a Professor of Management. He received his BSEE, MSIE, and PhD degrees from Iowa State University. His research interests are in design and control of manufacturing systems and use of approximate reasoning techniques such as fuzzy sets and evidence theory in decision-making. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) and a member of IEEE and INFORMS.

Esmail Mohebbi is an Assistant Professor of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He received his PhD and ME in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto, and his BSIE from Tehran Polytechnic University. His research interests are in the areas of inventory management and manufacturing planning and control systems. He is a member of IIE and INFORMS.