Production planning and control in textile industry: A case study

This paper presents an interactive model based system for the management of production in textile production systems focusing on the Master Production Scheduling problem. Because of the special characteristics of the industry, that is mainly the multi-phase process with multiple units per phase, different planning horizons and different production requirements for each phase, the scheduling of these systems becomes quite complex. Apart from a comprehensive presentation of the set of the modules the system is composed of, together with their interrelationships, the above characteristics are analyzed, and their impact on the production control system is explained. The system is also related to two well-known production control systems, namely MRP-II and Optimised Production Technology. The system's attributes are presented with the aid of data structure diagrams, while the complete algorithm concerning the Master Production Scheduling module, in a pseudo-code form, and the corresponding part of the database are illustrated in the Appendix. Keywords: Master Production Scheduling, Decision Support Systems, Production Planning, MRP-II, Textile Industry. 1. Introduction Textile production systems form an interesting area for the study of scheduling problems. The industry has been developed following both vertical integration, particularly among spinning and weaving firms, and horizontal integration, promoted by the idea that a full line of textile products is necessary for effective marketing [1]. Such production systems comprise various page