A framework for production rescheduling in sociotechnical manufacturing environments

Abstract

No plan survives contact with reality. Despite the rich research base regarding handling uncertainty in production planning and control systems, there is an intellectual gap between theory and practice with regard to handling unforeseen events generated by internal and external factors, such as unforeseen machine downtimes and changes in demand. Motivated by longitudinal observations in two industrial settings and an analysis of the relevant literature, a framework for rescheduling decision-making in the face of unforeseen production events is proposed. In practical settings, the effectiveness of decisions depends on a set of situational factors. The findings of this research can be utilised further to provide guidelines for developing effective decision support principles and systems, addressing the needs of organisational decision-makers.

Keywords:

• Decision-making
• rescheduling
• production planning and control
• case study
• uncertainty

Acknowledgements

This research has been made possible by the project SFI Norman (Norwegian Manufacturing Future), which was funded by The Research Council of Norway. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments that have helped to improve the paper. We are also grateful to the representatives of the case companies for their collaboration and Dr Torbjørn Netland for his thoughtful review and insightful suggestions.